'Keep calm and change your DNS,' Turkish tweeps' answer to Erdoğan's 'yes we ban'

ISTANBUL

The Turkish government has put its name to one of the most ineffective bans in history, with social media users managing to easily get around new restrictions to tweet about the blocking of Twitter.

The block was carried out only hours after Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan vowed to “wipe out” Twitter in a show of force.

“I don’t care what the international community says. Everyone will witness the power of the Turkish Republic,” Erdoğan had memorably said.

But the microblogging website, which he called “a troublemaker” during last year’s Gezi protests, continued to cause trouble for the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP).

People first shared instructions on how to change the DNS settings on a computer on walls - and not only Facebook walls.


Erdoğan’s solemn announcement of the Twitter ban was depicted with a poster and slogan evoking Barack Obama:
Human rights organizations, such as Reporters Without Borders and PEN, have marked the event by warmly welcoming Erdoğan's addition to a select club of leaders:



So, against the cutting of access to Twitter (picture one), tweeps called on "the Bluebird" to #resist (picture 2). In another picture they vowed not to let it be sacrificed, using one of Erdoğan’s favorite buzzwords, “Yedirmeyiz” (which literally means, we will not let something be eaten): “You hunted in the lowland (duck), you turned it psycho (angry bird), yedirmeyiz (Bluebird).”







But the number of tweets did not drop despite the ban. In this picture, an unhappy Erdoğan looks at a monitor, the legend says “sooo everyone is tweeting”:

 

Many graphics showed Erdoğan tormented by his nemesis. One graphic was inspired by the Alfred Hitchcock classic, 'The Birds':