How to Circumvent the Twitter Blockade

The same day PEN announced that Dick Costolo, CEO of Twitter, will be awarded the inaugural PEN/Toni and James C. Goodale Digital Freedom Award, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan announced that access to Twitter has been banned in Turkey after information damaging to the government was leaked on the site.

Despite the government’s brazen attempts at silencing free speech in response to increasing violence at political protests, the people of Turkey, supporters of free speech and democratic governance around the world, and even Twitter have jumped in to enable access to the site. Below, three ways in which to get around the blockade: SMS, DNS settings, and proxy servers.

By SMS:

Twitter makes it possible forTwitter users in Turkey to Tweet by text message. They shared the codes online yesterday just hours after Twitter went dark in Istanbul.

By changing the DNS settings on your device:

Check out the tools OpenDNS and Google DNS–both are reliable, though non-techie users should be cautious.

Wikileaks posted step-by-step instructions in Turkish on how to change the DNS Settings on your iPhone:

By using a Proxy Server:

Many users in the region use VPNs, though they can prove costly, unreliable, or malicious. Try Tor, which anonymizes the Internet connection

As the situation intensifies and the government shows no signs of backing down on its efforts to contravene its citizens’ human rights and freedoms, PEN American Center will be following the situation closely and monitoring developments.