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Turkey: Ankara provokes controversy by censoring the internet
The growing number of websites being banned by Turkey’s courts and government is giving rise to concerns about Internet censorship.
di Staff
About 850 websites have already been blocked in the country this year, the most recent has been Blogger, (Blogger.com) a popular blog-hosting site owned by Google. It blocked by court order because of illegal material found on a few blogs.
Access to the popular video sharing site YouTube has been blocked since May 2008, after amateurish clips mocking Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, modern Turkey’s founder, were posted on the site.
“The current Turkish law on controlling Internet content, through its procedural and substantive deficiencies, is designed to censor and silence political speech,” says a report set to be published next month by Cyber-Rights.Org, a British Internet organization. “Its impacts are wide, affecting not only freedom of speech but also the right to privacy and fair trial.”
The law passed by the Turkish parliament in May 2008, intended to prevent access to primarily pornographic and obscene web content, has given the state broad powers to control web usage. The newly created Telecommunications Directorate, a government office that monitors the Internet, is allowed to shut down websites without even a court order.
The agency has been behind 612 of the 850 bans imposed this year. Critics of Turkey’s Internet laws have been dismayed by the state’s heavy-handed approach, which allows for entire websites to be blocked because of a small number of offending items.
Orhan Pamuk, the Turkish author and Nobel laureate in his opening speech at the Frankfurt Book Fair, criticizes the YouTube ban in his country. “YouTube, like many other domestic and international websites, has been blocked for residents of Turkey for political reasons,” Pamuk said. “Those in whom the power of the state resides may take satisfaction from all these repressive measures, but we writers, publishers, artists feel differently, as do all other creators of Turkish culture and indeed everyone who takes an interest in it: oppression of this order does not reflect our ideas on the proper promotion of Turkish culture.”
Turkish officials have admitted problems with the law’s enactment, but defend its intent.
Source:www.eurasianet.org
