Turkey blocks access to WikiLeaks after leak of 300,000 emails
Turkey has blocked access to the WikiLeaks website after the group released around 300,000 emails from the ruling party of president Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
Turkey's Telecommunications Communications Board said it had taken an "administrative measure" against the website, a term used when blocking access to sites.
The trove of emails from the AK Party, dated from 2010 to July 6 this year, were obtained before last Friday's failed coup.
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In a statement, WikiLeaks said it moved forward its publication schedule "in response to the government's post-coup surges."
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"We have verified the material and the source, who is not connected, in any way, to the elements behind the attempted coup, or to a rival political party or state," the group said.
The Turkish government has launched a crackdown on the media, the military, the courts and the education system in the aftermath of the botched coup.
The licenses of 21,000 teachers suspected of supporting the coup were revoked after Erdogan accused Fethullah Gulen, a cleric in self-imposed exile in Pennsylvania of fomenting the uprising.
Followers of the Gulen movement, also named Hizmet, run a worldwide network of charter schools. The government has also imposed a temporary travel ban on academics and ordered the resignation of 1,577 university deans.
One of the WikiLeaks emails included a database of the phone numbers of AK Party deputies:
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The Turkish government has previously banned access to websites deemed to be carrying material critical of Turkey, including YouTube and Twitter.
Some opposition media websites were blocked following Friday night's coup attempt, which was quashed by security forces loyal to President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
Wikileaks said on Twitter that Turks who are blocked from accessing its website can "use a proxy or any of our IPs" to get access to the documents on Turkey's ruling party:
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The Associated Press contributed reporting.
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