ANKARA – Turkey's prime minister accused Twitter Saturday of tax evasion after the micro-blogging site was used to spread a number of damaging leaks implicating his inner circle in corruption scandals. “Twitter, YouTube and Facebook are international companies established for profit,” Recep Tayyip Erdogan said in televised remarks. “Twitter is at the same time a tax evader. We will go after it.” Erdogan suffered a double blow on Friday when a court rolled back his government's efforts to tighten its grip on the judiciary and Moody's cut its outlook for the economy on which for many his reputation stands. Erdogan has divided opinion at home and unnerved Western governments with his response to a corruption scandal swirling around his inner circle since December, removing thousands of police and judiciary officials and blocking social media sites. His ruling AK Party's victory in municipal elections on March 30, despite the scandal, reassured nervous financial markets, but also raised the political stakes ahead of an August presidential election and parliamentary polls next year. Cutting its sovereign outlook on Turkey to negative, Moody's said political uncertainty would weigh on weak points in its economy, notably its high external financing needs, throughout the voting cycle, damaging its growth prospects. “Moody's expects these tensions in the political arena to persist until at least the second quarter of 2015, when parliamentary elections are due,” the agency said. Erdogan's support among Turkey's masses is partly based on his Islamist-rooted ideology but also on a reputation for economic management. His AK Party delivered a decade of strong growth after unstable coalition governments in the 1990s ran into repeated balance of payments problems and economic crises. — Agencies
