Report: Court upholds Turkey’s YouTube ban

A court in Turkey ordered the government to keep up its ban on YouTube on Friday, according to the semiofficial Anadolu news service. 

The report comes hours after a court in Ankara, the capital, ordered an end to the ban. That decision was appealed on the grounds that YouTube had not removed links that hosted allegedly illegal content, Anadolu reported, and overturned until the content was removed. 

{mosads}The quick back-and-forth was issued just a day after the Turkish government ended its two-week blackout of Twitter.

YouTube has been banned for Turkish residents for nearly a week, after a recording emerged on the site that seemed to show top government official discussing the possibility of a military action against neighboring Syria. Twitter was blocked for linking to recordings that seemed to show top officials engaged in corruption.

Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, a growing hardliner in the government, has claimed that the recordings are false and pledged to “wipe out” Twitter.  

On Thursday, the top court in the country overturned the Twitter ban, asserting that the blackout limited freedom of expression. Erdoğan criticized the ruling but nonetheless complied. 

The bans were announced in the run up to critical municipal elections last Sunday, which were widely seen as a referendum on Erdoğan’s time in office. His ruling Justice and Development Party came out ahead in many of the local contests.