REPUBLIKA.CO.ID, ISTANBUL - Turkish President Abdullah Gul set himself publicly at odds with Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan on Friday, saying that it was unacceptable to impose complete bans on social media platforms such as Twitter.

Turkey's courts blocked access to Twitter following Erdogan's vow, on the campaign trail ahead of key March 30 local elections, to "wipe out" the service. In a defiant stand, Erdogan said he did not care what the international community had to say about it.

The prime minister, who has been in power for 11 years, is battling a corruption scandal that has been fed by social media awash with alleged evidence of government wrongdoing.

Gul, however, took to Twitter himself to say complete bans on social media platforms were unacceptable and to voice his hope that the block would be short-lived. Turkey's main opposition party said it would challenge the ban and file a criminal complaint against Erdogan on the grounds of violating personal freedoms. The country's bar association filed a separate court challenge.

"One cannot approve of the complete closure of social media platforms," Gul tweeted. He said only individual Internet pages should be blocked if there was a court order on the grounds that a person's privacy was being violated.

Gul co-founded the ruling Islamist-rooted AK Party with Erdogan and has remained a close ally. But he is viewed as a more conciliatory figure than the combative prime minister and their relations have at times appeared strained.

Twitter users in Turkey began reporting widespread outages in direct connections overnight. Some users trying to open the Twitter.com website were taken to a statement apparently from another regulator citing four court orders as the basis for the ban.

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