Twitter apologized on Monday for letting a phrase that roughly translates as “Die Trump” to briefly trend in Turkey, The Washington Times reported.
“Mahvolursun Trump” started trending on Twitter in Turkey after President Donald Trump threatened to destroy the country’s economy if it did anything “off-limits” in Syria after US troops withdraw from the region, Breitbart News first reported.
“As I have stated strongly before, and just to reiterate, if Turkey does anything that I, in my great and unmatched wisdom, consider to be off limits, I will totally destroy and obliterate the Economy of Turkey (I’ve done before!),” the president wrote. “They must, with Europe and others, watch over the captured ISIS fighters and families.”
Doğu Perinçek, leader of Turkey’s left-wing Homeland Party, responded, “Mr. Trump you can destroy only USA,” along with the hashtag “#MahvolursunTrump,” which reportedly touched off the trend.
Twitter apologized for the “mistake” and said it had removed the hashtag.
“This phrase should not have appeared in trends, and we’re sorry for this mistake. At times, we do prevent certain content from trending and we have now done so with this trend,” the company said in a statement.