(UPDATE: ERDOGAN WIN) After Deal on Satellites - SpaceX 2 Years Ago, Elon Musk Agree to Help (More) Erdogan

Erdogan win election

May 28th, 7.29pm Ankara - Istanbul / 12.29pm DC — Erdogan win election

*UPDATE: 2nd round election,

#TurkiyeYüzyılı #Turkiyegeneli

7.51pm #ANKARA #ISTANBUL

Erdogan remains President

ANKA HABER AJANSI (96.46% counted):

#ERDOGAN 51.78%

#Kılıcdaroglu 48.22%

#ANADOLUAJANSI (96.01%)

#Erdogan : 52,28%

#Kilicdaroglu :47.72%

These campaign posters dot highways across Istanbul. It reads ‘Syrians will go’ alongside opposition candidate Kemal Kiliçdaroğlu. A Syrian, living here 7yrs, begged, “my children can read those signs it’s impossible for me to hide them.” She says her son is bullied at school.

Middle East region has a long memory. Turkiye presidential campaign is now part of collective memory, and Arabs - not just Syrians but all Arabs - will remember it for generations. Let us hope that in the future we can find some healing. Poor Turkey. The great hope to end autocracy is an old-style Kemalist fascist named Kemal Kiliçdaroğlu.

Erdogan maintains his pro-refugee policy. “Germany and America take Syrian refugees in. They also took our Meskhetian Turks. Are we such an ordinary country that we cannot open our doors to such migrants as America, Germany, France do?”

Erdogan took a principled position on the refugee question, explicitly refusing, on moral grounds, to expel them, even though doing so would have been popular with some voters. Kalicdaroglu, anointed Progressive saviour, perceives an opportunity to exploit.

Erdogan pays visit to grave of former PM Adnan Menderes in Istanbul (May 27th), 1 day before 2nd / runoff election. "The Turkish nation is Muslim and will remain so forever." - Former Turkish Prime Minister Adnan Menderes. Adnan Menderes reverted the call to prayer back to Arabic and reopened thousands of mosques which had been closed down. He was removed from office by a military coup on 27 May 1960 and executed by hanging on 17 September 1961 following a military trial.

X Corp or Twitter Inc. announced late Friday (May 12nd, 11.57pm California / May 13rd, 9.57am Ankara - Istanbul), or around 12 hours after Elon Musk appointed Linda Yaccarino as new CEO of X Corp / Twitter Inc (8.27am California), (announced) that it’s blocking some content in Turkiye ahead of Sunday’s presidential election (May 14th) in the country. 

When this note was written, the election started around 11 hours from now. 

The social media company did not explain which tweets would be blocked, nor who made the request, but current president Recep Tayyip Erdogan has previously blocked Twitter across all of Turkiye.

“In response to the legal process and to ensure Twitter remains available to the people of Turkiye, we have taken action to restrict access to some content in Turkiye today,” Twitter’s Global Government Affairs account announced on Friday.

“We have informed the account holders of this action in line with our policy. This content will remain available in the rest of the world,” the account continued.

2 Years ago, Sept 18th, 2021, still at a peak covid across the globe, (*Turkiye cancelled until 2x times to be host Final UEFA Champions League because coronavirus—- and just get a slot this year next June) the Erdogan administration signed a deal with SpaceX to launch the Türksat 6A satellite.

Musk's U.S.-based SpaceX is set to launch Turkey's first domestically produced communications satellite, Türksat 6A, this year. Maybe after SpaceX really smooth (after failure 3 weeks ago) launch (5,000 metric tonnes, super heavy-lift space vehicle of) Starship. 

After analyzing several companies' offers and options, SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket, which is the "best option” in terms of technical, administrative and financial aspects, was chosen, Transportation and Infrastructure Minister Adil Karaismailoğlu said in a press release.

Türksat and SpaceX have also signed an agreement in this regard, he added.

The minister noted the satellite's production, integration and test phases are being conducted in the Space Systems Assembly, Integration and Test (AIT) Center in the capital, Ankara. The project will make Turkey one of the 10 countries that can produce its own communications satellite, he underlined. The satellite is expected to be launched in the first quarter of 2023.

The satellite was created through the collaboration of the Transportation and Infrastructure Ministry as well as organizations and companies such as leading defense firm ASELSAN, Turkish Aerospace Industries (TAI) and CTech, along with Türksat and the country’s top scientific body, the Scientific and Technological Research Council of Turkey (TÜBITAK).

Previously, the Türksat 5A satellite was also launched by SpaceX in January 2021. The satellite secured Turkey's orbital rights for the next 30 years, covering Europe, the Middle East and large regions of Africa as well as the Mediterranean, the Aegean and the Black Sea region.

President Erdogan, who took power 20 years ago, faces a re-election challenge from Kemal Kilicdaroglu, who is currently even with the autocrat in the polls. If neither candidate wins more than 50% of the vote, a runoff election will take place on May 28.

Twitter CEO Elon Musk defended the censorship on Saturday in a tweet to commentator Matt Yglesias, who joked that there would eventually be “Twitter Files” reporting about the incident.

“Did your brain fall out of your head, Yglesias? The choice is have Twitter throttled in its entirety or limit access to some tweets. Which one do you want?” Musk tweeted.

Erdogan and his political party, the AK Party, have received criticism for a slow response to the devastating earthquake that rocked the country in February and killed over 50,000 people. Over 15 million buildings were affected and Erdogan was criticized for allowing lax construction standards that enabled many buildings to collapse during the quake.

U.S.-based human rights organization Human Rights Watch urged social media platforms like Twitter, Facebook, YouTube to be more transparent about how content moderation was performed.

“As election night draws near it is imperative that social media platforms and the wider internet remain accessible so the public can follow the work of independent election monitors and reporting around the vote count,” Human Rights Watch said in an article published Friday.

“Given the sorry state of Turkey’s mainstream media, the integrity of Turkey’s election depends upon it.”

Erdogan met with Musk in 2017, not long after America’s own aspiring authoritarian leader, Donald Trump, had taken power. More recently, Erdogan and Musk reportedly had a video conference call on December 16, 2021 to talk about lithium batteries for electric vehicles and the launching of satellites. Musk, who’s CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, also shook hands with Erdogan at the World Cup in 2022.

Twitter responded to questions about the censorship of content in Turkey with a poop emoji, an automated response set up by Musk back in March.