Erdogan Takes to Twitter to Hail Poll Win
He once wanted to "wipe out" Twitter and compared social media to a "murderer's knife," but President Recep Tayyip Erdogan couldn't resist sending a tweet on Monday to celebrate his party's election victory.
The famously tech-phobic Erdogan issued a series of tweets on his official account after the Justice and Development Party (AKP) he co-founded reclaimed its parliamentary majority in Sunday's vote.
"I would like to congratulate all the parties that participated in the November 1 election and all citizens who expressed the national will with their votes," he wrote.
"I congratulate the AK Party that will come to power alone, and my brother Ahmet Davutoglu who is AK Party chairman and Turkish prime minister."
Erdogan, who was elected president last August after ruling Turkey as premier for over a decade, has made no secret of his disdain for social media and had vowed to "eradicate" Twitter ahead of local elections in March 2014.
In August 2014 he compared social media to a "knife in the hand of a murderer", saying "I don't like to tweet."
The government blocked Twitter and YouTube days before March 2014 local elections after they were used to spread a torrent of audio recordings implicating Erdogan and his inner circle in an alleged corruption scandal.
However, the president sent his first ever personal tweet from the account @RT_Erdogan in February this year, denouncing smoking on Turkey's national anti-tobacco day.
Source: Agence France Presse
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