Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s press office is reportedly shutting down his WhatsApp groups for privacy reasons. The move comes after Ankara called for a national boycott of the Facebook messaging app.
As of Monday, the office is switching to the BiP encrypted messaging app, developed by Turkish company Turkcell, Bloomberg reported, citing internal messages posted to WhatsApp groups.
The decision comes amid growing consternation over WhatsApp’s plan to start sharing personal data with its parent company, Facebook. The policy takes effect on February 8 and users who refuse the new terms will not be able to access their accounts on the messaging platform.
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The updated user terms were met with hostility by the Turkish government, which used privacy issues to promote internally developed applications and Internet services.
Ali Taha Koc, head of the Presidency’s Digital Transformation Office, released a statement on Saturday warning that foreign applications “They contain significant risks to data security.” He urged Turkish citizens to move to “Local and national software,” claim that the move would help Turkey protect its data.
“As President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said, let’s fight digital fascism together!” he concluded.
The message seems to have resonated. Turkcell reported that about a million new users have joined BiP Messenger in the past 24 hours. The app has been downloaded more than 53 million times since its launch in 2013.
Meanwhile, the Turkish media has highlighted high-profile individuals who have joined the exodus. State agency Anadolu reported that a senior executive at Baykar, a Turkish drone company, announced that he was abandoning WhatsApp due to his new data policy and that he would start using BiP.
Erdogan had already warned about “Digital fascism,” arguing that the monopolization of data control would spell disaster for the world. In a November speech, he said the rest “human” in the digital age it would be one of the biggest challenges going forward. However, his own government has been accused of policing social media platforms and websites for political opinions that he finds unpleasant.
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