Eksi Sozluk: A Model for the Middle East?

Eksi Sozluk (or, "Sour Dictionary") is an Internet compendium of information comprised by numerous authors similar to Wikipedia. From The Next Web.com:

The site has 36,000 authors, and an equal number of users who hope to become authors. It contains more than 10 million entries, gathered into more than 2.5 million topics, and it attracts 7.5 million unique visitors a month, out of a total Turkish Internet population of a little over 30 million. It’s an enormous success that few outside Turkey have heard of.

This is even more surprising, when you consider that the site just celebrated its thirteenth anniversary February 15th. It’s the grandfather of blogs, older than Wikipedia, Facebook and Twitter; it was launched before Urban Dictionary, which has 6 million entries.

Screen shot 2012 02 18 at 12.16.06 PM Can Turkeys contribution to the Web be reproduced elsewhere?“The idea was to create a user-made dictionary,” says Sedat Kapanoğlu, the site’s founder. There’s no editing: anyone can create any definition. Like a real dictionary, the entries are ordered numerically, but there’s no limit to how many definitions there can be; they can surpass 10 thousand entries, as is the case with “Love”, or for the prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan. The most-read definitions are ranked first. All of this is processed in real time.

Some people see this as a sort of forum, but, Kapanoğlu insists, “We wanted to avoid that, and we created rules to prevent it from happening. We wanted a dialogue between ideas, not people. When a contributor leaves, the ideas and conversations remain.”

The site’s only revenue stream is advertising; in order to avoid “disrupting the user experience,” it is limited to one ad per page.

“We have more entries than the English version of Wikipedia,” Kapanoğlu responds when asked, “but the quality isn’t the same.” Jokes and false info abound. “We believe that no one has the authority to decide what stays on a site,” he says. “We’re neutral in terms of administrating it, and we’ve become one of the largest Turkish sites to defend the freedom of expression in a country where it is threatened.”

So there is no control of any sort. “I decided to let everybody express themselves, independently of social, religious or political stance It was very radical back then… and now makes us one of the most popular sites in Turkey.”

. . . .

The requests to copy the idea in English, French, Romanian and Arabic haven’t had much success. Kapanğlu is convinced that it can’t work anywhere else. “The way the site has grown is linked to specific aspects of Turkish society. We wanted to express ourselves, but had no space for that. The laws of physics don’t apply to social media; every culture needs its own platform.”

It’s a fascinating response, but one that Uçkan, the professor, doesn’t agree with. He recalls that Google’s social site Orkut, which is immensely popular in Brazil (and which plays an important role in India), was invented by Turkey’s Orkut Büyükkökten. Turkish-style socialization could perhaps spread elsewhere. “It can be copied. The format can be entertaining anywhere.”

It should be noted that Eksi Sozluk is one of many websites to face censorship and other attempts by the government to limit freedom of expression. Just this past June government officials detained 50 Eksi Sozluk users for insulting religion, and this was not the only time the website has been subject to state action. For more on Internet freedom in Turkey, click here.


UPDATE I (2/23) --  See also this article in today's Wall Street Journal on Turkey's emerging Internet market. According to the article, Turkey constitutes the fifth-largest Internet market in Europe, and Turkish users, in contrast to their other European counterparts, tend to spend more time online and be quite younger. Even more significantly is Turks use of social media. Turks constitute one of the top five audiences on Facebook and are within the top ten on Twitter.

An Opportunity for Citizen Journalism

Erkan Saka, whose English-language blog I feature in the blogroll ("Turkey in the Media") to the right, is leading a group of Bilgi University students in a social media project aimed to collect information garnered by citizen journalists monitoring the June 12 elections. From Hurriyet Daily News:

The website, http://secim2011.crowdmap.com, is a Turkish version of the Ushahidi website which uses the concept of crowdsourcing via multiple channels, including SMS, email, Twitter and the Internet, to provide citizens with a platform to upload their own instant media independently of mainstream networks.

“Our website allows the public to reach [campaign] reports in the easiest way,” media and communications student Metin Özer recently told the Hürriyet Daily News Economic Review.

Regarding recent protests in Taksim Square against plans to increase filters against the Internet, Erkan Saka, an academic at the university's Media and Communication Systems Department, told the Daily News that because no political parties were front and center during the demonstrations, it suggested that citizens were now experiencing a period of real activism and that such anti-censorship movements provided an example of mass collaboration.

“Turkish websites have become a refuge where hate speech or censorship is often protested [as evidenced by the] thousands who gathered in Taksim Square [earlier in May to demand a free Internet],” Saka said, adding that the group had launched the project not simply due to the protest but also because the website could be useful in promoting more productive uses of information technology.

Emphasizing the importance of the website, Özer said the project was a mission to support local journalism. The mainstream media collects its news from the wires, but it takes too long to format the information and post it for the public, he added.

“[The] purpose was to develop a collective mind through social media,” Saka said.

Saka has been active in the mass protests that have taken place throughout Turkey in reaction to Turkey's plans to introduce an Internet filtering and profile system set to launch Aug. 22. The protests in the Taksim Square and other places throughout the country evince the mass protest the government's plans have sparked.

However, what is needed in addition to the "real activism" of which Saka speaks is organization. The CHP has taken an active role in protesting the government's plan as well, and while there are a limited number of NGOs working on Internet freedom issues, in particular Bilgi University professor Yaman Akdeniz's Cyber-Rights.org and Bianet, which is challenging Turkey's already restrictive Internet law at the European Court of Human Rights, what is lacking are well-funded, well-organized civil society groups that are able to viably connect the protestors with the state.

More Internet Unrest

PHOTO by Emrah Guler / Hurriyet Daily News

Multiple progressive Turkish websites are being attacked just three days following large-scale protests of the Turkish government's plan to pass broadly restrictive measure on Internet use. From RSF:

Several websites that backed anti-censorship demonstrations held on 15 May have been intermittently inaccessible since then because of Distributed Denial of Service attacks. The targets include the site of the left-wing daily Birgün, the news site haber.sol.org.tr and the media freedom website Bianet.

“We are going to carry on publishing under alternative addresses in case we should become the subject of similar attacks in the future,” Bianet announced today after being inaccessible for eight hours yesterday. “If this should occur, the alternative address will be published on Twitter and via other channels.”

For the announcement from Bianet, click here.

In other Internet freedom-related news, the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) has asked the Turkish government to reconsider its plan to institute new regulations on the Internet, which are currently scheduled to go into effect on Aug. 22. The OSCE has also offered its assistance in helping Turkey draft an internet law that will respect freedom of expression. The Turksih government is also taking heat from the European Commission.

In a letter to Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu, the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe, or OSCE’s, representative on media freedom expressed concern about the Turkish government’s plans to introduce mandatory content filtering for all Internet users.

“This regulation would limit the right of individuals to access information they want and impose regulation of Internet content by the authorities,” OSCE representative Dunja Mijatovic wrote, adding that Internet users must have the freedom to make independent decisions about the use of content filters.

“If enforced, this regulation would contravene OSCE and international standards on free flow of information.” Mijatovic added.

Turkey also received international criticism from the European Commission, with a spokeswoman for Enlargement Commissioner Stefan Fule telling reporters Tuesday that the body is closely following developments regarding the filtering of online access in Turkey and other restrictions on the Internet.

She also expressed the European Commission’s uneasiness about Turkey’s blocking access to Internet sites frequently and disproportionately in terms of content and time, the Anatolia news agency reported.

The CHP is also taking advantage of the opportunity to challenge the government issue, utilizing its youth branches to capture support for the party before the upcoming elections on June 12.

"Don't Touch My Internet!"

Tens of thousands of protestors took to the street yesterday to protest the government's plans to further regulate the Internet. (For more on the new regulations, click here). From Bianet, which has challenged the new regulations in a case to be heard by the Council of State:

Hundreds of thousands of Turkish internet users took the streets in 31 Turkish provinces on Sunday (15 May) to demonstrate against the "Draft Bill on Rules and Procedures of the Safety of Internet Use" that was approved by the Council of Information Technologies and Telecommunication (BTK) in the end of February.

The participants of the protest action got organized via Facebook and Twitter. They walked along Istiklal Avenue all the way from Taksim Square to the Tünel district. Many groups joined the demonstration, among them also political parties, the Linux Users Association, the LGBTT initiative LambdaIstanbul, the 'Hands off the Internet' Initiative and websites like Kaldıraç, İnci Dictionary, Ekşi Dictionary, bobiler.org, Uykusuz, and the Ulusağ dictionary.

Labor unions also joined the protests.

The Forbidden Zone

The Turkish government via the Prime Ministry's Information Technologies Board (BTK) recently introduced a system in which websites bearing domain names carrying certain words will be automatically banned. Yesterday the government, through the Telecommunication Directorate (TIB) sent the list to Internet service providers ordering that website carrying these domain names be banned. From Hurriyet Daily News:

The affect of the decision could see the closure of many website that feature the banned words. For example, the website “donanimalemi.com” (hardwareworld.com) because the domain name has “animal” in it, a banned word and likewise “sanaldestekunitesi.com,” (virtualsupportunit.com) would not be able to operate under its current name because it has “anal” in it; also among the 138 banned words. Websites cannot have the number 31 in their domain names either because it is slang for male masturbation.

Some more banned English words are: “beat,” “escort,” “homemade,” “hot,” “nubile,” “free” and “teen.” Some others in English have different meanings: “pic,” short for picture, is banned because it means “bastard” in Turkish. The past tense of the verb “get” is also banned because “got” means “butt” in Turkish. Haydar, a very common Alevi name for men, is also banned because it means penis in slang.

“Gay” and its Turkish pronunciation “gey,” “çıplak” (naked), “itiraf” (confession), “liseli” (high school student), “nefes” (breath) and “yasak” (forbidden) are some of the other banned words.

Obviously there are problems with the list, and I do not think I have to mention that a website does not contain pornography just because an Internet domain site includes the word "gay."According to Yaman Akdeniz, who is at the lead of the fight for Internet freedom in Turkey, the government is in violation of the law. As draconian as Turkey's 2006 Internet regulation might be, there indeed seems little legal basis for what the BTK is doing.

“Hosting companies are not responsible for monitoring for illegal activities; their liability arises only if they take no action after being notified by the TİB – or any other party – and are asked to remove certain illegal content,” Akdeniz said.

The TİB cited the Internet ban law number 5651 and related legislation as the legal ground for its request. The law, however, does not authorize firms to take action related to banning websites.

“The hosting company is not responsible for controlling the content of the websites it provides domains to or researching/exploring on whether there is any illegal activity or not. They are responsible for removing illegal content when they are informed and there is the technical possibility of doing so,” according to Article 5 of the law.

On Thursday, following the heated debate surround the “forbidden” list, the TİB said the list was sent to hosting firms for informatory purposes. But the statement further confused the situation, as the body threatened companies with punishment if they did not obey its directions regarding the list in the first letter sent to service providers.

So, not only is the government violating rights to freedom of expression on a large scale, it is not even acting according to the rule of law -- at least not yet. The ban on domain names occurs at the same time the government is moving to implement a new regulation that paves the way for such infringements in the future.

As far as I can tell, the BTK is not citing recent regulation as the legal basis for its authority to demand internet service providers block access to these domain names, instead basing its authority on the 2006 Internet Law (No. 5651), which I have written about extensively. This law is draconian, but what is coming seems even worse.

The new regulations gives the government the authority to block and filter websites according to its own designs (independent of any court order), and importantly, not make its blocking and filtering practices public. Though the old regulation does give the TIB the authority to block access to websites, the authority blocking the website, whether the TIB or a specific court, is public information and the person trying to access the website encounters a message that the website is blocked. The TIB also acts on a set of criteria determined by the 2006 Internet law. For more on the old law, click here. If anyone can give me more information on the legal scheme here, I would much appreciate it.

Though Turkey has made considerable democratic progress in the past 10-15 years and in many ways improved its human record, this backsliding on media freedom raises serious questions about its democratic trajectory. Increasingly, the government seems to take the position that they can do anything they want as long as they are elected by a majority. Liberal democracy this is not. Electoral authoritarianism? Maybe.


UPDATE I (5/5) --  Bianet, a new portal from which I post regularly, is challenging the new regulations at the Council of State. Other websites are also following suit, and it might not be too much longer before the European Court of Human Rights is inundated with another round of freedom of expression cases in Turkey. Here is hoping the government repeals this insanity now and begins to work with experts on Internet law to pass a new Internet law that does not violate rights to freedom of expression and access to information, at least not on such a massive scale. For a bit of legal analysis from experts quoted in Hurriyet Daily News, click here.

Something Wicked This Way Comes . . .

Internet freedom in Turkey is drifting closer to the Orwellian as the Prime Ministry's Information and Technology Board plans to implement new regulations on the Internet. From Ersu Ablak writing in Hurriyet Daily News:

After Aug. 22 we will have a totally different system. The government is so kind and father-like that it wants us to be fully protected from any kind of harm that the Internet can bring about. This is why they have decided to provide Internet services to us filtered from the source. It is too much hassle to ban websites one by one, therefore they will have bundles and lists. According to the current plans there will be four types of bundles available.

These will be called Standart Profile (Standart Profil), Children’s Profile (Çocuk Profili), Family Profile (Aile Profili) and Domestic Internet Profile (Yurtiçi İnternet Profili). All of these profiles will be censored to various degrees so that we will be protected just as our profile needs to be, because our government knows best.

Each profile will have two lists assigned; A black one and a white one. In the black list there will be websites that will be banned and in the white one there will be websites that are allowed to be surfed.

The government says that they ban websites at the source so that our children will be fully protected. There will be no room for the human error of parents. Banning websites will be fully automatic. However, the people who will be in charge of these practices and the standardization of establishing these lists are very vague. The government will be able to censor any website at will. You won’t even notice it.

The regulation is entitled “Rules and Procedures of the Safety of Internet Use” and was passed just this February. As if Turkey's current (2006) Internet law was not bad enough . . . let's hope the government turns an about course.

Also, on another note, as far as I can tell the ban on Blogspot (and this blog) is still on.

Blogspot Banned . . . Again

PHOTO from Hurriyet Daily News

From Hurriyet Daily News:

A spat over rights to broadcast Turkish football matches has led a local court to issue a blanket ban on the popular blogging platform Blogger, angering Turkish Internet users with what experts said was a disproportionate response.

The court in the southeastern province of Diyarbakır banned the website, a property of Google Inc., in response to a complaint by the satellite television provider Digiturk, which owns the broadcast rights to Turkish Super League games. Matches broadcast on Digiturk’s Lig TV channel had been illegally posted by several Blogger users on their blogs.

“This is a disproportionate response by the court and undoubtedly has a huge impact on all law-abiding citizens,” cyber-rights activist Yaman Akdeniz told the Hürriyet Daily News & Economic Review on Wednesday, adding that millions of bloggers and blog readers would be affected by the Diyarbakır court decision.

“[I understand] there is a legitimate concern [regarding Digiturk’s commercial rights] but banning all these websites will not solve the issue. The decision opens the way to collateral damage,” said Akdeniz, who is also a law professor at Istanbul Bilgi University.

There are more than 600,000 Turkish bloggers actively using Blogger and some 18 million users from Turkey visited pages hosted by the site last month, Akdeniz said. The ban is expected to fully go into effect within a few days unless it is successfully challenged in court.

“If two people plan a criminal activity on the phone, should we ban the use of telephones all over the country?” asked Deniz Ergürel, the secretary-general of the Media Association.

“We believe this is a wrong approach to the issue and deprives millions of bloggers and Internet users from writing and sharing ideas online,” Ergürel, who is also a regular blogger, told the Daily News on Wednesday. He added that while the violation of Digiturk’s commercial rights should not be ignored, other solutions had to be found. “Even cursing, threatening or cheating over the phone is considered a crime, but this does not imply access to phones all over the country would be banned if there is a case against them,” he said.

Of course, this blog is a Blogspot/Blogger blog, and so for the time being, readers in Turkey are having to use proxy servers to gain access. There are many issues with how Turkey regulates the Internet, but at the heart of these broad "bans" is that the Telecommunications Board shuts off an entire website when only particular page or aspect of that page is troublesome. When we are talking about massive sites like YouTube and Blogspot, the orders become more than a little problematic, not to say ridiculous. For more on Turkey's Internet laws, click here. For more on Turkey's various disputes with Google, which operates Blogspot, click here.

 
UPDATE I (3/4) --  Google has petitioned the Turkish government to ends it blanket ban on Blogspot, calling on the Turkish government and firms concerned with copyright violations to use forms available on their website to seek redress for copyright violations rather than petitioning for the wholesale closure of websites. From a press statement the company has issued: “Instead of depriving all content owners from accessing Blogger services, we encourage them to make use of such a process. In this way, Blogger users from Turkey will be able to benefit from the services while we try to deal with the complaint.” Too much common sense? 

YouTube Ban Lifted

From Hurriyet Daily News:

Turkey’s longstanding ban on YouTube, the world’s largest and most popular video-sharing website, was lifted Saturday by an Ankara court following the removal of controversial videos from the service.

“Turkey is a country run by laws and everyone has to obey the law,” said Transportation Minister Binali Yıldırım, who oversees Internet-related issues. “Finally the managers of the website [YouTube] decided to move in this direction and realized there is no other way than following [Turkey’s] laws.”

Public access to the website was banned by a court decision nearly two and a half years ago over videos insulting Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, the founder of the modern Turkish Republic, something that is illegal in Turkey. Removal of the videos cleared the way for Turkish users to reaccess the website legally, Yıldırım said.

Yildirim is not telling the whole story, though. Google on numerous occasions approached the Turkish government about taking down offensive videos rather than having the Turkish government apply a wholesale ban of the website (see this post from 2008!). Also in the mix are allegations Yildirim and the Turkish government have made that YouTube and other Google provided services are violating Turkish law in that Google is not properly paying tax. What has changed here?

For more on Turkey's draconian Internet law, no doubt one of the most unpopular, if not the most unpopular law, on Turkey's books, click here. If I were the CHP, I would make an issue of it.

YouTube Ban Final?

From Bianet:

The Ankara 13th Criminal Court of First Instance dismissed the appeal filed against the decision of the Ankara 1st Magistrate Criminal Court regarding the access ban to 44 IP addresses that provided access to the global video sharing site YouTube.

The appeal had been filed by the Internet Technology Association (INTED). According to the nationwide Radikal daily, the decision finalized the ban imposed on YouTube two years ago.

About 2,000 people had met at Istanbul's centrally located Taksim square on Saturday (17 July) and walked down the popular Istiklal Avenue to protest internet censorship in Turkey. The demonstration was seen as a signal for more protests to come.

. . . .

While the access ban was reasoned with videos insulting the memory of Atatürk, Transport Minister Binali Yıldırm in particular announced on different occasions that YouTube as a company did not pay its part on advertising revenues. He furthermore pointed out that YouTube had not opened a representation in Turkey and that access to the site was banned because this was a breach of Turkish law.

The YouTube ban is facilitated by a 2007 Internet law allowing the government's Telecommunications Directorate and Turkish courts to restrict access to websites that violate Turkish law, here namely a law that violates the insult of Ataturk. The Turkish government has recently claimed that YouTube is in violation of Turkish laws pertaining to internet commerce.

For background, see July 1 post.

No Budging on YouTube

The Turkish government is maintaining its position on YouTube, defending its ban of the video-sharing site by stating that Google, which owns YouTube, should and must be treated as any other entity in Turkey. Turkey's Ministry of Trade, which regulates telecommunications here, is claiming YouTube owes Turkey back taxes, a claim Google disputes (for past post, click here).

Access to YouTube and other websites in Turkey has been restricted since 2007 when the government pushed through a law giving broad powers to courts and the Telecommunications Directorate to regulate the Internet. For more on this law and other websites that have been blocked as a result of its application, see Jan. 24 post.

Under the Internet law, either the Telecommunications Directorate or courts have the right to block internet sites that contain content in explicit violation of Turkish law (pertaining to Turkey's many laws against obscenity, morals, slander, insult, etc.).

Meanwhile, an internet rights group, the Internet Technologies Association, has filed suit against the ban, claiming the government is violating Turkish law and the European Convention on Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms. Similar suits are already on file at the European Court of Human Rights, which has yet to issue a ruling on the law.

From Bianet:

During a speech delivered at the award ceremony of the "IT 500" survey carried out by the Interpromedia Research Service, Yıldırım said, "YouTube is treated just like any other ordinary person".

As reported by the news channel CNN Türk, Yıldırm stated that "shortcuts have already become a tradition" in Turkey. He continued, "This is a global brand, blah blah blah... 'Sir, how can you stick up to this huge company'. If you believe in universal law and if you respect the sovereignty of the countries, you have to stick to the country's rules regardless of who you are dealing with. A citizen from the country 'X' does not have priority in country 'Y'. This conception is incompatible with democracy and modernity".

"Unfortunately, there are people in our country defending this issue on behalf of modernity. That hurts. Everybody is obliged to abide by the law of this country. Nobody has priority. This can be a willing representative or a passionate advocator, it does not concern us".

"We say, 'go ahead, if you do business in this country, you will be treated before the law just as any other ordinary person in the Turkish Republic. We are not concerned with anybody's freedom regarding internet commerce. Turkey is a state of law. Everybody should be tied to the force of law".

Minister Yıldırım indicated that informatics and legislation do not get on well with each other. He argued that informatics is an area that ruins memorization, abolishes conservatism and creates a change of attitude. Legislation on the other hand pursued to keep everything under control, he said.

Yildirim's rather political assessment about the conflict between "legislation" and "infomatics" most surely gives internet rights and free speech activists cause to worry, and indeed seems to hint that the current dispute with Google centers on much more than just back taxes.


UPDATE I (7/5) -- An Ankara court has rejected the Internet Technoogy Association's appeal disputing one of the many various bans Turkish courts have put into effect against YouTube while at the same time adding 44 alternative IP addresses being used to access the site to the existing order. See Bianet for the report. Nicki Sobecki also has a report on the most recent Internet squabble in The Guardian.

The Battle With Google Deepens

A tax dispute with Google has further hindered Internet freedom in Turkey. According to Transportation Minister Binali Yildirim, who is responsible for Internet regulations, Google has made advertising revenues from the YouTube website, access to which Turkey has locked off-and-on again for over two years. As a result of the most recent dispute (the first that has been tax-related), regulators in Turkey's Telecommunications Directorate have seemingly managed to somehow slow down and sometimes completely disable a variety of Google services, including Google Maps, Google Documents, Google Analytics, and even GMail.

The initial cause of the YouTube block involved offensive videos of Ataturk, which despite YouTube/Google's attempt to work with Turkey (see Dec. 8, 2008 post), was consequently blocked. Instead of simply isolating the offensive videos and removing them, Turkish courts and the Telecommunications Directorate took the extraordinary step of blocking the entire website.

The YouTube ban has been facilitated by a 2007 law giving broad powers to courts and the Telecommunications Directorate to regulate the Internet. For more on this law and other websites that have been blocked as a result of its application, see Jan. 24 post. Under the Internet law, either the Telecommunications Directorate or courts have the right to block internet sites that contain content in explicit violation of Turkish law (pertaining to Turkey's many laws against obscenity, morals, slander, insult, etc.).

However, what is different about the most recent bit of meddling is that it is being done by the Telecommunications Directorate without such a reference, though the Transportation Minister has been emphatic that Google is violating tax laws.

Google executives have requested a meeting with the Telecommunications Communication Presidency (TIB), though Yildirim has given little indication that the meeting will result in an agreement.

Lawsuits against the incessant YouTube bans and 2007 Internet law are ongoing, and the European Union (see Progress Reports), the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), and watchdog groups like Reporters Without Borders have all weighed in on the issue, but to little avail. The media monitoring website Bianet has also recently filed a lawsuit, claiming the Internet law and most recent Google ban has improperly hindered their operations and output of news content.

For more on the most recent squabble, see Yigal Schleifer's Friday post.


UPDATE I (6/18) -- According to the TIB, an Istanbul court ordered the Telecommunications Directorate to block access to a Google IP address used to access Google applications. The court order was made on June 7.

UPDATE II (6/23) -- The OSCE has weighed in on the most recent dispute with Google. OSCE Media Freedom Representative Dunja Mijatovic announced on Tuesday that she wrote personally to Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu urging the Turkish government to cease blocking/hindering access to YouTube and Google applications, as well as to overhaul its Internet law. Turkish civil society groups have also protested the most recent government actions. Still no word from the government.

Reporters Without Borders Puts Turkey "Under Surveillance"

Reporters Without Borders has put Turkey on its "Under Surveillance" list of countries routinely restricting freedom of expression on the Internet. Reporters Without Borders' short report largely echoes that the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) issued in January.

Currently, some 3,700 sites are allegedly blocked in Turkey, some for “arbitrary and political reasons,” according to the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) (www.osce.org). Among them are many foreign websites, news sites about the Kurd minority, and EU gay websites, thereby muzzling any opportunity for debate.

. . . .

Law 5651 on the Internet permits this mass blocking. The OSCE thus urged Turkey to implement reforms to demonstrate its commitment to freedom of expression. Article 8 of this Law authorizes blocking the access to certain websites if there is even a “adequate suspicion” that any of the following eight offenses are being committed: encouraging suicide; sexual exploitation or abuse of children, facilitating the use of narcotics; supply of unhealthy substances; obscenity; online betting, or anti-Ataturk crimes. It is this latter provision that creates problems. Websites hosted in Turkey are often shut down, and those hosted abroad are filtered and blocked by Internet service providers. Denunciations are encouraged: there is a hotline for reporting prohibited online content and illegal activities. Over 80,000 calls were recorded in May 2009, as opposed to 25,000 in October 2008.

Site-blocking is carried out by court order or by administrative order of the Supreme Council for Telecommunications and IT. Such administrative decision is arbitrary and precludes the possibility of a fair trial. This entity, which was created in 2005 in the aim of centralizing surveillance and the interception of communications (including on the Internet), has not issued its blacklist of blocked websites since May 2009 – indicating a troubling lack of transparency.

. . . .

Internet censorship is truly raising concern in Turkish society. The blogosphere has been protesting against the blocking of YouTube, and the mobilization campaign was relayed by the traditional media after an article on the subject was published in The Wall Street Journal. Virulent editorials have appeared in Turkish newspapers. One of them, printed in the Milliyet daily of February 17, 2010, was headlined: “Let’s take away Istanbul’s status as the European Capital of Culture” – a status granted by the European Union in 2010 in order to recognize Turkey’s cultural development. The censorship strategy adopted by Turkey, as publicized by the YouTube case, seems to conflict with its European ambitions and the contemporary image it wishes to project.

The report also cites individual cases in which "netizens" were harassed, oftentimes prosecuted under the varous criminal provisions restricting freedom of expression in Turkey's penal code.

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.)

Facebook's Kurdish Opening

From Bianet:

The social networking site Facebook can now also be accessed by using the Kurdish language. After a campaign initiated by users of the website, the site administrators added Kurdish to list of available languages. Only a part of the application can be used in Kurdish as a start. The range of applications accessible by Kurdish can only be expanded if there is sufficient demand by the users.

An estimated 3,000,000 Kurdish people out of a total of 17,000,000 people in Turkey use Facebook on a daily basis. Under the section of "applications" on the main page of the site the user has the option to choose between 108 different languages including Kurdish.

There's Still No Free Speech In Turkey, and It's Still a Bad Thing . . .

Adnan Oktar, the prominent social conservative and creationist, has filed multiple court cases to shit down websites, including, most famously, that of Richard Dawkins.

The Turkish government's laws allowing for Internet censorship are despised by many across a wide spectrum of society. Unlike Turkey's many speech codes, including the infamous Article 301, which rarely draw much public scorn other than from human rights groups, Internet censorship via IP-blocking of sites deemed inappropriate is seen as a particularly troublesome violation of freedom. Many Turks often have varying opinions on what speech should be banned -- yours, not mine; and speech that seems, for whatever reason, unduly insulting (and, of course, the idea of what is "insulting" varies). Yet, Internet laws are the most widely condemened state imposed limits on freedom of expression.

The lack of freedom to surf has also drawn quite a great deal of condemnation from human rights monitors. Monday involved yet another, this last emanating from from Milos Haraszti, the OSCE's media freedom monitor. According to Haraszti, over 3,700 websites have been blocked for "arbitrary and political reasons." In 2008, head of the Telecommunications Board Tayfun Aracer put the number of sites banned since November 23, 2007, at 1,112. Haraszti called on Turkey to reform its Internet law, which was passed as Law No. 5651 in May 2007. The law directs the state-run Telecommunications Board to block access to websites that are obscene, encourage suicide, or promote or facilitate prostition, gambling, the use of narcotics, and the sexual exploitation of children.

While these reasons might seem relatively narrow in scope, the law also directs the Board to block sites that violate other Turkish laws, including the broadly applied anti-terrorism law and Turkey's speech codes (in the Penal Code), e.g. insulting the Turkish nation, the Turkish republic, or Turkish governmnent/state institutions (Article 301), inciting hatred or hostility among the population (Article 216), slander (Article 267), influencing the judiciary during an ongoing court case (Article 277), influencing an ongoing investigation (Article 285), preventing a fair trial (Article 288), discouraging indivduals to serve in the military (Article 318), and engaging in acts that run counter to fundamental national interests (Article 305). In November 2007, the state initiated a telephone hotline and website to report offenses

Additionally, under Article 24 on the Civil Code, individuals can apply for access to be blocked to a website they think is "an infringement on their personal rights." This had led numerous indviduals, from religious conservatives like Adnan Oktar, the anti-Darwin cult figure, to nationalists, like members of the Ataturkist Thought Association, to apply to courts to shut down sites on any number of grounds. Courts have the right to order the Telecommunications Board to block access to a website during an investigation or trial following the receipt of a complaint.

The European Union called on Turkey in it 2009 progress report to amend the Internet law, and numerous cases have begun to appear before the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR). A party to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), Turkey's routine practice of proscribing websites deemed offensive to any number of parties has only increased the level of criticism the government receives at home and abroad, as well as injured its position in the EU accession process. Many of the civil society projects in Turkey receiving EU funding are related to the freedom of expression. For an account of the Internet restrictions, see Freedom House's Freedom on the Net report.

Sites that have been banned include YouTube, GoogleGroups, WordPress, and Blogspot (which you are on now). For more on the Internet law, see Google's efforts to navigate Turkey's vast array of speech codes (a near Herculean task) (Dec. 8, 2008), as well as this analysis from Gareth Jenkins (Oct. 4, 2008). See also this post authored in 2008 when Turkey moved to amend Article 301, though proesecutions continue and the change was largely regarded as cosmetic.

Also recommended in CyberRights, a site setup by activists Kerem Altıparmak and Yaman Akdeniz to publicize violations of Internet freedom.

The YouTube ban was taken to the ECHR this past December. From Bianet:

The Internet Technology Association (INETD) applied to the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR), objecting to the decision to block youtube.com in Turkey. Access has been banned to the global video sharing site for 19 months now since 5 May 2008.

INETD president Mustafa Akgül announced that INETD filed the complaint "on behalf of the ones harmed by the ban and on behalf of the entire country". Akgül claimed that the ban is "against the law and contrary to the public interest".

Akgul's petition alleges violations of the right to free expression, the right to a fair trial, and the right to assembly and association.


UPDATE I (1/27) -- Left out of the litany of speech-related offenses in Turkey's Penal Code is Article 125, which makes it illegal to insult the honor and dignity of someone. Article 125 was used as the basis of the criminal complaint against Yeni Asya cartoonist Ibrahim Ozdabak when he seemingly depicted Supreme Court of Appeals Chief Prosecutor Abdurrahman Yalcinkaya as a hooting owl during the closure case against the AKP in 2008.

UPDATE II (2/20) -- The Intitative Against Crime of Thought has published its annual report, "Freedom of Thought 2009" (in Turkish). The report, in book form, documents 36 cases of imprisoned journalists, as well as prominent and not-so-prominent cases of individuals who fell scrutiny to Turkey's many codes hindering freedom of expression in Turkey, including those in the Turkish Penal Code and the Anti-Terrorism Law. The review includes cases against Osman Baydemir, Aysel Tuğluk, Leyla Zana, Ragıp Zarakolu, Nedim Şener, Nedim Gürsel, Erol Karaaslan, Ahmet Karayay, İbrahim Kaboğlu, Baskın Oran, as well as cases of censorship and the DTP closure clase.

Google and Turkey's Internet Laws

From Jeffrey Rosen in New York Times Magazine:

In March of last year, Nicole Wong, the deputy general counsel of Google, was notified that there had been a precipitous drop in activity on YouTube in Turkey, and that the press was reporting that the Turkish government was blocking access to YouTube for virtually all Turkish Internet users. Apparently unaware that Google owns YouTube, Turkish officials didn’t tell Google about the situation: a Turkish judge had ordered the nation’s telecom providers to block access to the site in response to videos that insulted the founder of modern Turkey, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, which is a crime under Turkish law. Wong scrambled to figure out which videos provoked the court order and made the first in a series of tense telephone calls to Google’s counsel in London and Turkey, as angry protesters gathered in Istanbul. Eventually, Wong and several colleagues concluded that the video that sparked the controversy was a parody news broadcast that declared, “Today’s news: Kamal Ataturk was gay!” The clip was posted by Greek football fans looking to taunt their Turkish rivals.

Wong and her colleagues asked the Turkish authorities to reconsider their decision, pointing out that the original offending video had already been voluntarily removed by YouTube users. But after the video was taken down, Turkish prosecutors objected to dozens of other YouTube videos that they claimed insulted either Ataturk or “Turkishness.” These clips ranged from Kurdish-militia recruitment videos and Kurdish morality plays to additional videos speculating about the sexual orientation of Ataturk, including one superimposing his image on characters from “Queer Eye for the Straight Guy.” “I remember one night, I was looking at 67 different Turkish videos at home,” Wong told me recently.

After having many of the videos translated into English, Wong and her colleagues set out to determine which ones were, in fact, illegal in Turkey; which violated YouTube’s terms of service prohibiting hate speech but allowing political speech; and which constituted expression that Google and YouTube would try to protect. There was a vigorous internal debate among Wong and her colleagues at the top of Google’s legal pyramid. Andrew McLaughlin, Google’s director of global public policy, took an aggressive civil-libertarian position, arguing that the company should protect as much speech as possible. Kent Walker, Google’s general counsel, took a more pragmatic approach, expressing concern for the safety of the dozen or so employees at Google’s Turkish office. The responsibility for balancing these and other competing concerns about the controversial content fell to Wong, whose colleagues jokingly call her “the Decider,” after George W. Bush’s folksy self-description.

Wong decided that Google, by using a technique called I.P. blocking, would prevent access to videos that clearly violated Turkish law, but only in Turkey. For a time, her solution seemed to satisfy the Turkish judges, who restored YouTube access. But last June, as part of a campaign against threats to symbols of Turkish secularism, a Turkish prosecutor made a sweeping demand: that Google block access to the offending videos throughout the world, to protect the rights and sensitivities of Turks living outside the country. Google refused, arguing that one nation’s government shouldn’t be able to set the limits of speech for Internet users worldwide. Unmoved, the Turkish government today continues to block access to YouTube in Turkey.

Click here for full article. Rosen goes on to examine Google's use of I.P. blocking in a variety of other cases, including requests made by neoconservative U.S. Senator Joseph Lieberman to block sites the senator considered "jihadist." As Rosen propounds, Google's role as the "Decider" certainly places the world's largest information search engine in a truly powerful position, ultimately determining what content may be seen in what country.

As Rosen notes, Google's IP blocking technique has failed to mollify Turkish critics. YouTube continues to be intermittently banned for a variety of offenses, as do a number of other websites, including GoogleGroups, WordPress, and most recently, BlogSpot. Under a law passed in May 2007, Internet websites can be banned by Turkish courts or blocked by Internet service providers under a variety of circumstances, including personally offending someone. Adnan Oktar, a prominent Turkish creationist, has successfully petitioned to have a number of websites banned, most famously Richard Dawkins'.

Human rights activists have grown increasingly concerned with the new law, which appeared in the annual reports of Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International. The law has also drawn criticism from European Union officials, most recent being British MEP Richard Howitt. Most damaging diplomatically, the law was cited as unduly limiting freedom of expression in the European Commission's most recent progress report on Turkey's progress toward accession, and is also likely to play prominently in the European Parliament's upcoming report.

In documenting rights violations that have occurred under auspices of the new law, Kerem Altıparmak and Yaman Akdeniz have authored a recent book, Restricted Access, alleging the law to be in violation of the European Convention on Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms. According to Altıparmak and Akdeniz, violations are not limited only to undue restrictions on the freedom of expression, but also rights to a fair trial and privacy. They have also assembled a website to document and publicize the violations. From TDZ:

Akdeniz and Altıparmak argue that Law No. 5651 was rushed through Parliament just before the Parliament was dissolved for the 2007 general elections and that it had not received broad public support before or after its enactment. Universities and experts, including bar associations, were not consulted about the bill, either.

The authors point out that Web sites can only be blocked if they commit crimes listed under Article 8 of Law No. 5651: encouraging suicide, sexual exploitation of minors, encouraging drug use, supplying harmful substances, obscenity, providing a forum for gambling and prostitution. Web sites may also be banned under other laws, such as the Law on Intellectual and Artistic Works. After examining the many instances of Web site bans over the past year, Altıparmak and Akdeniz suggest that many of the blocking orders that have been issued are actually against the law.

“It is unlawful for the courts, judges and public prosecutors to issue blocking orders and precautionary injunctions outside the scope of these two provisions. Based on this view, blocking orders issued outside the scope of these provisions should be lifted by the courts that issued the orders in the first place,” they claim.

Aside from the issue of the law itself, blocking Web sites is simply an inadequate method for combating illegal content, the authors argue. “Blocking as a preventative policy measure has been explicitly dismissed within the context of terrorist use of the Internet at the level of the European Union. Furthermore, circumvention technologies are widely available, and the filtering and blocking mechanisms and methods currently used in Turkey are easy to circumvent even for inexperienced Internet users. The futility of the current blocking measures is evidenced by the fact that YouTube.com was the 16th most accessed site in Turkey according to the alexa.com Web site on Aug. 18, 2008, almost three months after the latest blocking order was issued,” the writers point out.

For full article, click here.

Prominent Creationist Reveals Dark Side of New Internet Law

Adnan Oktar, whose pseudonym is Harun Yahya, is an Islamic fundamentalist author/activist with fervent creationist views. Oktar is the head of a prominent creationist organization, the Scientific Research Foundation (Bilim Arastırma Vakif—BAV), and was recenty entangled in a criminal court case as a result of his political activities. Oktar and BAV have been making headlines for sometime in the Turkish press, but his efforts to take advantage of a new law passed in November making it possible for individuals to petition to close websites have gained the attention of the international press. The court case against the Islamist occurred in the heat of the closure case launched against AKP for allegedly being a center of anti-secular activities, and while no doubt politically inspired, fell amidst Oktar's own political machinations, especially his zealous attempts to limit freedom of expression.

Oktar's most famous target is Richard Dawkins, whose website he successfully petitioned to have shut down in September. Since that time, he has successfully shutdown other sites, including the newspaper Vatan and that of the Education Personnel Union. One of the first websites Oktar had shut down was the popular website Ekşi Sozluk, a type of urban dictionary replete with sour humor. Accusing the site of libel, his petition was granted and access to the site restricted by Türk Telekom. His publications have a broad readership throughout the Muslim world, where he is well-known for his anti-evolutionist views, and his publishing house is devoted almost exclusively to the issue.

Oktar (Yahya) recently appeared in The Guardian, which featured an interesting, but none too flattering profile in a larger story about the evolution debates. As a Texan, it is particularly amusing to read he has ties with a bizarre creationist organization in Dallas, Texas.

But ideas do not die, they spread and mutate. Creationism might be on the back foot in America, but it is blossoming elsewhere as Richard Dawkins discovered when Turkish readers told him they could no longer access his website. Dawkins's offence was to satirise Harun Yahya, the pen name of Adnan Oktar, the front man for a wealthy Islamic publishing house. Its lavishly illustrated Atlas of Creation spends 500 pages comparing fossils with present-day species to argue that evolution never took place. Dawkins looked at a picture of an ancient fossilised eel and a picture of what Yahya claimed was a modern eel and pointed out that it was in fact a sea snake.

Yahya went on to represent the immutability of God's creation by claiming that a fossilised insect had survived unchanged for millions of years. Unfortunately, the modern version of the caddis fly Yahya chose to illustrate his point was not a fly at all, but a steel fish-hook with a fake insect on top to lure fish on to the line.

Yahya is a joke, but few Turks are laughing. Index on Censorship reported last week that the Turkish courts and the Islamist government were banning Turks from accessing YouTube and the hosting sites Blogger and WordPress for various moral and political reasons as well as richarddawkins.net. When Bianet, a Turkish human rights group, published a critical piece, Yahya told its journalists: 'This is an insulting article, take it off the internet or we will have you banned like Richard Dawkins.'

'On the one hand, fundamentalists say all they want is a debate,' said Padraig Reidy of Index. 'But as soon as they get power, they close debate down.'

Westerners say that Yahya reminds them of American creationists. The link is more solid than they know. In Atlas of Creation, Yahya acknowledges his debt to Duane Gish from the Institute for Creation Research in Texas. Gish has spent years arguing that the fossil record contains no evidence of species evolving and blustering whenever a palaeontologist contradicted him. As a Muslim, Yahya did not need to accept the institute's Protestant fundamentalist 'young-Earth' doctrine - the notion that God made the world in 4004BC or thereabouts. But he happily borrowed Gish's equally idiotic delusion that today's species cannot have evolved and must therefore be identical to their ancestors of tens or hundreds of millions of years ago.

Vast sums of probably Saudi money are fuelling the move of creationism across the Atlantic. In Turkey and the Middle East, poor schools are grateful for Yahya's free books and scientists are becoming frightened of speaking out. Last year, the Council of Europe warned that Yahya was also targeting schools in France, Belgium, Spain and Switzerland. In Britain, academics talk of expelling mainly Muslim science students. They do not make a fuss about it in case post-modern relativists in the mould of Steve Fuller accuse them of religious discrimination, but say, very quietly, that if religion stops their students accepting evolution, there is no point in them staying at university.

Maybe in a generation's time, Americans will patronise Europeans as quasi-fascist bigots. If we are to avoid their condescension, we must accept that creationism will not go down with the American conservative movement. It is evolving and its opponents must evolve, too, if they want to defeat it.

Interestingly, to some degree, Oktar's views may be moderating, as he recently expressed told a group of a reporters a few weeks ago that Muslims can believe in evolution, and still be good Muslims. There are plenty of evolutionists in the United States who do not apply the same attitude toward Christianity.

For a wonderful article in the international press about Internet freedom, see Yigal Schleifer's recent piece in the Christian Science Monitor. Schleifer's article focuses on Oktar, but also assesses the impact of the new Internet laws:

Turkish officials have admitted problems with the law’s enactment, but defend its intent. ‘The fight against elements that aim at degenerating societies and poisoning the youth and children is the fundamental task of each country. Every country has different regulations related to the Internet,’ transportation minister Binali Yildirim, who is also responsible for communications, recently said.

‘Our aim is not to ban websites. Such measures will come to an end as soon as our courts are able to ban problematic content instead of entire websites,’ he said.

But critics like Yaman Akdeniz, a professor of law at the University of Leeds and director of Cyber-Rights.Org, believe Turkey’s Internet law is too flawed to be salvaged and would most likely not stand up to a legal challenge at the European Court of Human Rights, whose judgments are binding on Turkey.

‘The current law should be abolished and the government should start from scratch when it comes to controlling the Internet,’ he says.

Mustafa Akgul says without a new approach, Turkey may find itself increasingly left behind when it comes to utilising the power of the Internet.

‘Turkish politicians haven’t had any real vision on how to develop the Internet. There are more people working on censoring it than developing it,’ he says.

Blogspot Back, but Internet Freedom Question to Persist

From Today's Zaman:

A ban on the popular blog-hosting service blogspot.com/blogger.com was lifted on Monday until “missing evidence” has been collected. The Diyarbakır First Court of Peace announced the decision on Monday afternoon by faxing a statement to Türk Telekom, a Turkish Internet service provider.

The statement indicated that the ban was lifted until missing evidence has been collected. The ban may be re-imposed when the court finds enough evidence to close down the site.
However, the statement reportedly did not explain what the missing evidence was.

Access to these sites was suspended Friday upon a complaint by Lig TV, the founding broadcaster of the Turkcell Super League. According to the complaint, the blog-hosting service enabled their users to watch soccer matches without subscribing to the TV station.

Turkish Internet users trying to access the popular blog-hosting service blogspot.com received an error message saying that access to the site has been blocked by court decision, without stating the court ruling or explaining why the service has been banned. The latest in a series of bans on popular Web sites has spurred many to question the future of Internet freedom in Turkey. The ban received harsh criticism from several associations and activists who said it was a great mistake to block access to the whole Web site instead of screening out unwanted content.

Several Turkish nongovernmental organizations advocating freedom of speech and expression stressed in a written statement on Monday that frequent Web site bans damage Turkey’s image abroad.

For more on the statement put out by a wide assortment of NGOs, click here. Sites like Wordpress, and even Google Groups, have been banned before. From BIA-Net:

In Turkey where access to a global video sharing site youtube.com has been banned for six months now, blogger.com of Google Corporation may meet the same fate as well.

The measures against websites are being taken under article 8 of Law 5651 on online publications and the fight against cyber-crime, which was adopted on 4 May 2007 and took effect in November 2007.

In Turkey, internet sites are banned if their content is deemed harmful to
children, encourage use of drugs, gambling, prostitution, dangerous elements for
health, pornography, suicide and contain insults against Atatürk, founder of
Turkey.

1112 internet sites, among them YouTube, as well, has been banned in Turkey.

Among those banned are Dailymotion.com, geocities.com, Prof. Richard Dawkins' richarddawkins.net, turandursun.com, anarsist.com and devrimciler.org.

Wordpress and Google Groups were banned before, but are now open.

In May 2007, twenty non-governmental organizations that are expert in telecommunications had declared that the Law of 5651, passed on May 4, 2007, had many problems as far as the freedom of expression was concerned, giving the bureaucracy the authority to censor any internet site without a trial.

One has to wonder at how easily a decision was made to shut down Blogger.com at the behest of Digiturk, what this has to say about the state's relation to corporations versus concerns with freedom of expression, and that little effort seemed to be made to narrrow the material restricted. Why was Blogspot restricted alongside Blogger.com?

TDZ reports on Transportation Minister Binali Yıldırım's efforts to look into ways to block unwanted pages of websites versus the site as a whole.

At this rate, Article 8 of Law 5651 on Online Communications stands to become as infamous as Article 301, and will surely draw the attention of Europe and likely appear in the progress report due to be issued Nov. 5.

Blogspot, Blogger.com Blocked in Turkey

From the Turkish Daily News:

Following the censorship of YouTube, now the widely used site blogger.com has been shut down, reported daily Radikal yesterday. The censorship decision was made by the Diyarbakır Penal Court on Oct. 20. Together with blogger.com, the site's extension blogspot.com is also not going to be reachable by users in Turkey. Thousands of people who use the site blogspot.com reacted strongly to the news of the ban. “Instead of celebrating the birthday of the site, now we are going to have to ask each other what other ways we can find to enter the site?” wrote one blog user. “What crime did my blog commit? What crime did sister Nalan's blog commit, who writes her food recipes?” wrote another user ironically. “What is the crime of food recipes? Do they also have a destructive effect?” Blog sites, which are used all over the world by millions of people, have played a significant role on the personalization of the Internet. Thousands of people in Turkey are using the site to publish their own voice on the Internet.

Blogspot joins other websites banned by various Turkish courts.

Click here for coverage in TDZ. See June 19 post. So far, people can still easily navigate their way around banned sites like YouTube by using proxy servers.

A Closer Look at Diminishing Freedom on the Internet

From Gareth Jenkins at EDM:

The Turkish authorities have long sought to block Internet users in Turkey from accessing websites associated with militant groups that espouse violence, such as the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK). Over the last 18 months, however, there has been a rapid rise in the censorship of websites, purely because they contain material that expresses values or opinions deemed unsuitable for the Turkish public.

Until May 2007, there was no legal framework in Turkey specifically designed to regulate the content of Internet websites. In practice, the judicial system tended to apply the same laws that were used to regulate traditional media outlets such as newspapers and television channels. On May 4, 2007, however, the Turkish parliament passed Law No. 5651, which was specifically designed to regulate Internet content and prevent websites from being used for crimes such as “encouraging suicide,” “the sexual exploitation of children,” “facilitating the use of narcotics,” “obscenity,” “prostitution,” and “gambling” (Law No. 5651 of May 4, 2007, published in the Official Gazette No. 26530 of May 23, 2007). The law also provided for the prevention of access to websites that violated other Turkish laws, such as anti-terrorism legislation or the law that forbids insulting the memory of the Turkish Republic’s founder, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk (Law No. 5816 of July 25, 1951, published in the Official Gazette No. 7872 of July 31, 1951). In addition, under Article 24 of the Turkish Civil Code (Turkish Ministry of Justice website, www.adalet.gov.tr), individuals can apply for access to be blocked to a website that they feel is “infringing on their personal rights.”

In the case of content that is deemed to be obscene or to exploit children sexually, Law No. 5651 empowers the state-run Telecommunications Board to prevent access to the website without recourse to a court decision. For most other offences, a court ruling is required. Since November 2007, members of the public have been able to notify the Telecommunications Board of what they believe is inappropriate content via a designated telephone number and website.

Under Turkish law, the decision to block access to a website is made by the court or by the Telecommunications Board on its own. According to figures released by Tayfun Acarer, the head of the Telecommunications Board, access has been prevented to a total of 1,112 websites since November 23, 2007, with 251 of them blocked by a court ruling and 861 by a decision of the Telecommunications Board itself. The owners of the websites in question do not need to be informed and invariably only learn that their website has even come under suspicion once access to it from inside Turkey has been blocked (Radikal, October 2, Milliyet, October 3).

Since early May, Internet users in Turkey have been prevented from accessing the popular video-sharing website YouTube, after Greek nationalist youths used the site to post some amateurish videos mocking Ataturk (Ankara First Petty Crimes Court, Decision No 2008/402 of May 5). Websites banned for “obscenity” range from genuine hardcore pornographic sites to the photographs link on www.moonamtrak.org, a website set up by a U.S. group that annually bares their buttocks at passing Amtrak trains (Ankara Ninth Petty Crimes Court, Decision No 2008/140 of February 4).

. . . .

There are also increasing signs that Internet censorship is not being used to “protect” Turkish citizens but to try to enforce a particular worldview or political opinion.

For full analysis, click here.