Until Friday, Turkish President Abdullah Gul had not posted anything on his Twitter account for a solid month. But he got busy after the country’s Prime Minister took the extraordinary step of banning the site inside Turkey.

“I hope this ban will not last long,” Gul wrote. “If there is a violation of privacy on Twitter, only the related pages should be blocked. The platform is impossible to block altogether. Such a ban is also unacceptable.”

Though not nearly as pithy as Erdogan—“Twitter, mwitter!” the Prime Minister declared at the Thursday campaign rally where he announced the ban—Gul’s prompt use of a banned site said almost as much as the great torrent of outrage unleashed worldwide by Erdogan’s audacious move. Gul, after all, is the official who, while expressing reservations, signed the legislation allowing state organs to ban the internet – a move that cost him 80,000 followers at @cbabdullahgul. Widely seen as the alternative to Erdogan in the ruling Justice and Development Party, known in Turkey as AKP, Gul has tried to navigate a course within the parameters of party loyalty but still wide of the premier’s authoritarian streak.