The Prime Minister of Turkey, Tayyip Erdogan has banned Twitter from his citizens to stop them from accusing him of being corrupt via the social networking site. However, the Turkish people are thriftier and tech savvy than Erdogan originally anticipated. In fact many Turks are so angry that Erdogan is limiting what they can access on the internet that those who knew nothing about things such as VPN or DNS are trying to learn more to get back at the government.

The reason that Erdogan is so threatened by the microblogging site that citizens have been exposing his corrupt dealings through audio tapes of his family and businessmen. These have been released on Twitter right before important elections for the country on Sunday. The Prime Minister has accused opponents of manipulating the audio to frame him and smear his campaign… and then he attempted to ban Twitter. As the government tries to shut down avenues of communication to those who oppose, tech savvy citizens continue to find new ways to communicate to large groups of people. The result of this cat and mouse game is a kind of censorship arms race, each trying to outsmart the other for their own means.

Frist citizens tried to change domain names to route their internet use to different servers and thus avoid the ban. When the government caught on citizens then tried VPN software hotspots and TOR software. It is important for Turkish citizens to continue to adapt and fight the ban by continuing to tweet and use YouTube. It is almost impossible to censor an entire nation and as long as they keep moving and adapting, Erdogan will never be able to stop his critics.