So how was your day, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan? We're guessing it didn't go quite the way you intended. For example, several million fewer people on this planet didn't associate your name, if they knew it at all, with the word "dictator."
But that was the top worldwide trending hashtag for many long primetime hours on Twitter Thursday -- #DictatorErdoğan. Suddenly, millions of non-Turks who didn't know your name went running to their Wikipedias to find out this latest globally-acknowledged bad guy was. Who was joining the elite club of North Korea, Iran, Syria and the other global pariahs who've tried blocking Twitter?
And maybe you would have liked that kind of notoriety -- maybe it is, in fact, why you blocked Twitter in the first place.
Indeed, you immediately and rather gleefully anticipated a response from the "international community" at a rally Thursday, thus setting yourself up as a Turkish hero taking on the world, or some woefully unoriginal nationalistic nonsense, and distracting attention from the tales of your government's corruption leaking in through Twitter. You get to look the big man by saying "Twitter, Schmitter," right?
People write DNS settings on the govn party’s elex posters on the street after #Turkey blocks #Twitter pic.twitter.com/PhPLmw3Kkt @tolgaadanali
— Selin Girit (@selingirit) March 21, 2014
Only trouble is, Twitter gave you a black eye. Spray-painted on your election posters across Turkey are mysterious and revolutionary sets of numbers. You're probably not tech-savvy enough to know what they are, but they're numbers for DNS servers. Everyone in your country is but two clicks on "Settings" away from flouting your ridiculous Twitter ban.
I say "probably not tech-savvy enough" not as an ad-hominem attack, but a fair assessment of your level of game. You "poisoned the wells" of local DNS servers, but did nothing to hold back the tide of international servers. Even those not savvy enough to check their settings could connect to Twitter simply by going to Tor first.
Rookie mistake, Prime Minister Erdoğan. Next time, try some next-level Iranian Intranet action.
Well that's backfiring. The whole world is watching, Turkey. #TwitterisblockedinTurkey pic.twitter.com/mexOESV7Qd
— Occupy Wall Street (@OccupyWallStNYC) March 21, 2014
There's a great Turkish saying: "Things have befallen him that haven't even befallen a cooked chicken." pic.twitter.com/7JbLddDVWC
— Elif Batuman (@BananaKarenina) March 21, 2014
But even that wouldn't stop your countryman shouting about what a buffoon of a leader you are, not unless you started blocking the cellular networks too. Because Twitter, in lieu of any kind of angry response to your actions, simply and immediately sent out a single tweet -- the Internet equivalent of barely lifting a pinkie. And hey presto, anyone in the country with a phone could send news to everyone in every other country.
Turkish users: you can send Tweets using SMS. Avea and Vodafone text START to 2444. Turkcell text START to 2555.
— Policy (@policy) March 20, 2014
Your ignorance no longer had meaning. Your impotence was showing. The #twitterblockedinturkey hashtag, watched by the world and trending for the whole day, was absolutely owned by Turkish tweets -- 77% of them from the country that wasn't supposed to be able to use Twitter, by your order. Some 17,000 tweets every minute leaked out of your impregnable kingdom like it was a sieve.
Since the block on #Twitter, almost 2,5 million Turkish tweets have been posted. That's ~17000 tweets a min. via @zetegazete
— Selin Girit (@selingirit) March 21, 2014
So yes, why not let all leaders who think it's a good idea to block the free-flow of information come and have a go at blocking Twitter? In the highly unlikely event they have the wealth and intelligence to succeed, well, we've exposed one of the bad guys to the world's glare. But in the far more likely event that they fail -- as Hosni Mubarak did in Egypt; remember what happened to him? -- then their days are most likely numbered.
Erdoğan may yet win the municipal elections on March 30; he is the clear favorite, after all, and he has pretty much absolute control of the internal Turkish news media. But that's just one battle, and after today, it may not even be clear Erdoğan knows what game he's playing. The "dictator" hashtag may not apply here, for simple reasons of incompetence. Far better to be a plain-and-simple Prime Minister.