Turkey’s Hurriyet Daily News on Saturday summarized a weekend speech given by Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan as one in which the Turkish leader “lashe[d] out at all his ‘foes’,” outlining that Erdogan “maintained his angry criticism of the Constitutional Court, the Gezi Park protesters, Twitter and the Gulen movement.”

Saying the government had started work to finalize its “global projects,” Erdoğan said the plant was a “vital investment” and demonstrated his government’s green credentials. “This is a great example of environmentalism. Who is the environmentalist now? The people of Gezi? All they can do is shatter windows and throw molotov cocktails around. Our job is to build,” he said.

He continued to criticize the Gülen movement as “the parallel structure” and claimed that “Twitter, Facebook and YouTube have become tools in their operation.”

Erdogan and his Justice and Development Party (AKP) have sought to ban Twitter since the eve of recent nationwide local elections, in a move widely seen as aimed at limiting discussions of a graft scandal that had ensnared top AKP elites including Erdogan and his family. That corruption investigation had in turn been driven by elements in the police and judiciary linked to the Islamist movement of U.S.-based cleric Fethullah Gulen. For its part the Constitutional Court had ordered the government to remove the Twitter blackout, prompting ongoing and angry denunciations by Erdogan and other government officials.

Agence France-Presse (AFP) documented comments from Erdogan’s Saturday speech branding Twitter a “tax evader” and promising to “go after” the popular microblogging platform.

“Twitter, YouTube and Facebook are international companies established for profit and making money,” Erdogan said. “Twitter is at the same time a tax evader. We will go after it,” he added. “These companies, like every international company, will abide by my country’s constitution, laws and tax rules”.

Reuters read the controversy as one of many in which Twitter’s nature “as a public, broadcast medium and its viral network model” had led to it being “viewed as a particularly destabilizing force by some governments,” including by Iran.

Meanwhile Hurriyet reported that skirmishes between Erdogan and the Constitutional Court are widening, after the Court partially overturned a judicial bill that would have shifted power to the justice minister. The outlet noted that the legislation had been “drafted by the government amid the graft allegations.”

[Photo: World News TV / YouTube]