The media office of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has announced that it will stop using WhatsApp after the world's most popular messaging application WhatsApp introduced a new privacy policy.
After the explanatory statements released by WhatsApp yesterday, the Turkish presidential office said that its media office will give a briefing to journalists through BIP app on Monday (today, January 11) Ga which is a unit of Turkish communication company Turkish Cell.
WhatsApp's new privacy policy, introduced last week, has been challenged by users in Turkey using the hashtag Deleting WhatsApp on Twitter. Turkish state media quoted Turkish Cell as saying that in just 24 hours, the number of BIP subscribers increased by 1.12 million while it has 53 million subscribers worldwide.
Ali Taha, head of the Turkish President's Office for Digital Transformation, criticized WhatsApp's new rules and policy two days ago, saying users in the UK and the EU were exempt from the new data-sharing rules. He asked Turkish citizens to use "national and local" apps such as BIP and Didi. Ali Taha had said in a tweet that the distinction between EU countries and other countries in terms of data privacy is unacceptable.
"As we have made clear in the Information and Communication Security Guidelines, there are significant threats to data security in foreign apps," he said. That's why we need to secure our digital data with local and national software and develop it to suit our needs.
Keep in mind that WhatsApp's new privacy policy is being heavily criticized by users. Under the policy, Facebook and its affiliates will have access to WhatsApp user data, while the user's account will be deleted if the privacy policy is not accepted, effective February 8.
