The son of Turkish Prime Minister Recep Erdogan launched a new social media startup today that hopes to compete with Twitter, which was recently blocked in the country.
Cıvıltı, which means “chirp” in Turkish, looks and functions almost exactly like Twitter. It allows users to post messages of up to 140 characters in length, share photos and videos, and follow other users’ activity in their home feeds.
The upstart site, which is based in the posh Istanbul neighborhood of Etiler, even copies the visual style of its more famous competitor, right down to the sky-blue bird logo.
However, Cıvıltı isn’t affiliated with Twitter. Rather it’s backed by Ahmet Erdogan, the son of the nation’s longtime prime minister, and it is marketed as a homegrown alternative to the American-based service.
The new venture couldn’t have launched at a more propitious time. Last month the government, led by Ahmet's father, Recep Erdogan, banned Twitter and YouTube for several weeks after videos showing alleged corruption in his administration were circulated on the social media sites.
Turkey’s highest courts later invalidated the ban on Twitter, but left the one on YouTube in place. Uncertainty still lingers over the future of both services in this country of 74 million people.
“I can guarantee that Cıvıltı will never be blocked by the government,” boasts Ahmet Erdogan in an exclusive interview. “The problem with Twitter is that it’s often difficult to access in Turkey. Cıvıltı eliminates that problem. It works just like Twitter, but will never, ever go down.”
Turkey’s ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) has been rocked by an ongoing corruption scandal which first broke in December 2013 when several government officials and three sons of government ministers were arrested on bribery, money laundering, fraud and smuggling charges.
Some of the government’s harshest critics may see echoes of this corruption in Cıvıltı, which seeks to profit off of decisions made at the highest levels of the Turkish government. Ahmet himself, however, dismisses such criticism.
“I’m not dependent on my father," he declared. ”I’m an entrepreneur. My goal is become the next Steve Jobs.”
