President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Wednesday accused the West of adopting "double standards" on freedom of media, staying silent in the face of increasing censorship by the Twitter platform.
Speaking at the 7th Anatolian Media Awards ceremony in the capital Ankara, Erdoğan said: "Those accusing Türkiye of censorship remain silent about those (Twitter) doing real censorship."
"We are witnessing the same double standard in the process of a social media company, which has been recently taken over," Erdoğan said, referring to Twitter and the recent release of its internal files.
He added: "With whom this social media platform, which supposedly never compromises on freedom and personal privacy, does business with, what it serves behind the scenes, and how it censors people and ideas that it does not like are revealed one by one."
Elon Musk recently exposed the former Twitter management for its political censorship and suppression of information on key matters and critical elections by revealing documents detailing how the social media giant manipulated feeds, boosted U.S. Democrats, and restricted former President Donald Trump’s presence.
However, the few months that Elon Musk has officially owned Twitter have been riven by chaos, with mass layoffs, the return of banned accounts and the suspension of journalists critical of the South African-born billionaire.
Erdoğan, however, said both international media organs and human rights organizations are silent on such scandals.
"Those who usurped the right of communication of billions of people continue to talk about democracy and freedoms as if nothing happened," he said.
Criticizing those who embraced Gülenist Terror Group (FETÖ) members who published state secrets while posing as journalists, he said they did not even hesitate to shut down media organs for much simpler matters.
"We all know that those who have been criticizing democracy, human rights and press freedom in Türkiye, how fascist they are when it comes to themselves and their interests," he censured.
After the defeated coup of July 15 in Türkiye, which killed over 250 people, "those who ruthlessly criticized us have raised a stir in the face of the rumors of a coup in their own country," Erdoğan said.
Referring to the 2013 Gezi Park protests, the president said those who tried to present "looters in Türkiye as heroes, defined the demonstrators as terrorists when similar events took place in Paris and Washington."
He went on to add: "We have not seen or heard of any international media outlets calling the 'yellow vest' protesters who set the French streets on fire as apostles of democracy, and those who raided the U.S. Capitol building with guns as freedom fighters."