Tuesday, March 9, 2010

Web Access a Fundamental Right

In a BBC poll, 90% of Turks surveyed expressed their belief that the access to freely surf the Internet was a fundamental right, more than any other European country. Yet, the Turkish government is one of the most restrictive in the world when it comes to Internet freedom (see past posts on Internet freedom.)

1 comment:

Bulent Murtezaoglu said...

Who says the general public has to be consistent? When asked, they will also say the gov't should do something about the 'offensive' stuff on the 'net. Have you seen anyone tell the people -- in Turkish -- that having such liberties mean a lot of 'offensive' things will exist and be visible/accessible? I haven't. (As an example, just look at how often our US-educated 'intellectuals' call for banning 'hate speech.' How will this get done w/o impeding the flow of information at the borders? Will they get the US gov't to shut down sites there? It is protected speech there afterall -- a fact they skilfully avoid mentioning when they talk about the US in Turkish.)