Since September 18,2009 MySpace, a popular social networking site and Last FM-where you can listen to free music, has been blocked in the country for alleged copyright and intellectual protery right violations.

According to Reporters Sans Frontières,

“Copyright is often used as grounds for censoring the Internet,”

Turkey's decision to censor the internet could affect its relations with the European Union because

“Disconnecting access to a website on the orders of a prosecutor rather a judge is a violation of the European Convention on Human Rights, which Turkey has signed.”

Decision to block MySpace is not first step in Turkey's decision to police the internet. In 2008, blog host Blogger(owned by Google),popular video sharing site YouTube and about 850 sites were banned, according to a report published at The Christian science Monitor.

Decision to ban YouTube came after an “insulting” video on the country's founder Mustafa Kemal Atatürk appeared on the site.

In The Christian Science Monitor report, Turkish transportation minister defends the country's decision to police the internet

“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,”

To learn more about freedom of speech in Turkey, especially how an article in the country's penal code affects citizen's right to freedom of expression, here is a report by Press TV's Jody Sabral (recorded on 8th May,2008).

A Turkish court has blocked access to the popular blog hosting service Blogger (Blogger.com and Blogspot.com owned by Google), since Friday, October 24th, 2008. According to BasBasBas.com, a Dutch blogger based in Istanbul, who alerted us to the issue:

It is suspected that the reason for this has something to do with Adnan Oktar, by some considered the leading Muslim advocate for creationism, who has in the past managed to get Wordpress, Google Groups, as well as Richard Dawkins’ website.

Turkish Internet users are seeing this message when trying to visit Blogger.com and all blogs hosted on blogspot.com hosting service: “Access to this website has been suspended in accordance with decision no. 2008/2761 of the TR Diyarbakir First Criminal Court of Peace.”

Screenshot of the Turkish blockpage. Source: BasBasBas.com

This is the second instance of a popular blogging service being blocked in Turkey. In August 2007, the Turkish Fatih Second Civil Court of First Instance blocked access to the entire wordpress.com domain after alleged libel of Turkish Islamic-creationist, Adnan Oktar, aka Harun Yahya.

Adnan Oktar has been very harmful to the access of Turkish Netizens to the Internet. He has succeeded in getting a variety of major websites banned by court decisions. Next to these two blogging services, Adnan Oktar also filed a complaint against Google Groups, which led to the ban of the website.

Turkey also blocks access to both video-sharing websites, Youtube and Dailymotion over videos deemed insulting to the country’s founding father, Kemal Atatürk.

Slide, the maker of social networking widgets, has also been blocked by a Turkish court for “harboring pictures and articles that are considered to be insulting to Ataturk.”

Update #1 via Cyber-Rights.Org.TR:

It is now being reported by Turk.internet.com that the blocking order is related to an intellectual property infringement. Digitürk is a subscription based digital TV platform in Turkey which owns the right to transmit the live coverage of the Turkish football league games. Digitürk obtained the blocking order through the Diyarbakir court according to the Turk.internet.com news as there were blog entries providing information and links to known websites which transmit pirated transmission of the live football league games.

Update #2 via CyberLaw Blog: CyberLaw Blog reported today (October 28, 2008) that the ban on blogspot.com blogging platform has been lifted by the Diyarbakir First Criminal Court:

It is, however, unclear why the order has been lifted and it seems like the ban is lifted until Digitürk provides to the court further evidence with regards to its claims for football streaming piracy. Therefore, I would not be surprised to see the blocking order and the ban reinstated.

This is not the first time Oktar has been involved in such litigation. In April 2007, Oktar successfully filed a defamation complaint against Turkish online news site Eksi sozluk. Oktar filed the complaint because of comments that users of Eksi sozluk had posted about him; a similar site, Superpoligon, was also blocked. Access to Eksi sozluk was restored shortly after the complaints were filed, and the offending remarks removed by the site's administrator.

Less than four months later, Oktar appealed to Wordpress.com to remove a number of blogs which he deemed slanderous. Following an unfavorable reaction from Wordpress, Oktar again filed a complaint with the Turkish judicial system, which in turn blocked Wordpress within Turkey. Oktar's complaint was based on a number of blogs created by rival Edip Yuksel, a prominent dissident. To date, Wordpress remains blocked, despite numerous campaigns to unblock the site. Turkish bloggers now use Wordprexy, a mirror site set up by activist group Great Firewall of Turkey, to read and post to Wordpress blogs. Less than six months later, Oktar filed a complaint against Google Groups, which led to that site being blocked within Turkey as well (Google.com remained accessible; only the subdomain groups.google.com was filtered). It is once again available.

Oktar's latest rancor is directed at Richard Dawkins, a British ethologist and evolutionary biologist. Following the release of Oktar's creationist book, Atlas of Creation, Dawkins wrote on his Web site:

“I am at a loss to reconcile the expensive and glossy production values of this book with the breathtaking inanity of the content.”

Oktar, who was involved in the attempt to ban Dawkins' book The God Delusion in Turkey, retaliated by filing a complaint in regards to Dawkins' Web site. A Turkish judicial court sided with Oktar, and ordered Turk Telecom to ban the site.

In each instance, the foreign press was quick to assume that the blockings were related to Turkey's rising Islamist party, the AKP. It is perhaps more alarming that politics had little to do with it. It is surprising that Oktar, considered a charlatan by the Turkish public, and having so recently run afoul of the law, carries so much weight in the Turkish judicial system.

In fact, Oktar carries neither more nor less weight than anyone else. According to a recent Reuters article, a law passed in May now allows the Telecommunications Directorate to close down websites based on complaints by individual users, thus enabling anyone with a complaint to get a site blocked. The problem therefore lies in the ease with which anyone can file such a complaint.

On Oktar's Web site, HarunYahya.com, there is a quote from the Qur'an: “Truth has come and falsehood has vanished. Falsehood is always bound to vanish.” If Dawkins' work is the falsehood Oktar is referencing, then indeed he has succeeded in making it “vanish”…if only from the Turkish Internet.

Posted on ONI Blog

So how are Turkish bloggers protesting these periodic bans on the internet? By putting the following up on their website: Bu siteye erişim kendi kararıyla engellenmiştir which translates roughly into “This site is blocked by [the author's] own choice”.
This protest is to last until Wednesday August 20th. And of course, this isn't an issue that many are writing about, just participating. The anafikir blog [tr] has a separate page where you can find the code to convert your website to the “blocked” page and a running list of sites that are participating. Several Turkish media sites are covering the protests and providing links to forum groups and Facebook sites. Techcrunch gives a history of the block as they have observed it:

The problem has gotten so bad that Turkish blogs are now banning themselves in protest. The fake bans started with Firat Yildiz, who put this message up on his blog[…]Then another Turkish blogger, Selim Yoruk, created this page with a piece of code that lets any blogger easily add the same message to his homepage. Nearly 200 Turkish blogs have (temporarily) shut themselves down in this manner. The point is to show Turkish Web surfers what the Internet would look like if the censorship continues unabated.

Turkish blog Metroblogging:Istanbul is supporting the ban by advertising it and encouraging dialog:

After the ban of many a video streaming websites by the Turkish government, bloggers decided to take the matter into their own hands by protesting the Chinese style censorship going on. We were getting used to the void left by YouTube when suddenly, Dailymotion, another video streaming website got banned also. […] Show us your support by leaving a comment and having a whinge with us about the whole situation :)

It is too early to predict if the protest will have any effect, however, expat blogger located in Turkey, SortiPreneur had the following to say about the situation:

The sites being shut down is a problem, and I am glad there's a voice being raised in protest. However, I think the Turkish internet community needs to address the issue with more mature moves in parallel.

The sites are shut down not as censorship, but as a result of court decisions. This is not dissimilar to Napster being shut down in the U.S. And, contrary to some of the commentary on blogs, not all bans have to do with insults to Ataturk (although a few of the bans are for those insults, due to the fact that it's illegal to insult Ataturk in Turkey) , but are a result of civil libel suits by private individuals. In other words, the site bans are in accordance with the legal system here. BTW, I am not saying I agree with any of the particular laws, but I don't categorically have a problem with a system where laws are being enforced.

The primary problem I see is the lack of understanding Turkish courts have about the internet, and especially about user-generated content. It seems to be that there needs to be specialized courts designated as venues for online content related prosecution.

Having commented on the problem, let me point out the role (or lack thereof) of Turkish NGOs that have the responsibility to lobby on behalf of the internet industry.

Is this the way to concretely address censorship in Turkey? Or are there other possibilities as SortiPreneur suggests? We invite you to weigh on this protest.

This is the second instance of a popular video-sharing website being blocked in Turkey. YouTube was blocked on and off over videos deemed insulting to the country’s founding father, Kemal Atatürk.

A similar situation is found in Tunisia where both video-sharing websites, Dailymotion and Youtube, are made inaccessible.

In a note to Slide users in Turkey, Slide announced that it has contacted the Turkish government in hopes of resolving the issue:

If you use Slide in Turkey, you've probably noticed that you are no longer able to access the Slide website or our applications (you may not even be able to access this post). The Turkish government has accused Slide of “harboring pictures and articles that are considered to be insulting to Ataturk,” founder of the republic.

We have contacted the government of Turkey in an effort to resolve this situation and will keep you updated on any changes. In the meantime, we're trying our best to enable Turkish citizens to access our website and applications again.

According to Slide statistics, Slide widgets are being viewed by more than 143 million unique viewers every month in more than 200 countries on websites like Facebook, MySpace, Hi5, Orkut, and Blogger.

According to The New Anatolian, Turkish users trying to access Youtube are receiving a message explaining the ban : “Access to www.youtube.com site has been suspended in accordance with decision no: 2008/55 of T.R. Ankara 12th Criminal Court of Peace.”

This is the third time that Youtube has been banned in Turkey following similar court decisions deeming that videos appearing on the site were insulting to the father of modern Turkey,Kemal Atatürk.

On August 17, 2007, the Turkish Fatih Second Civil Court of First Instance blocked access to the entire wordpress.com domain after alleged libel of Turkish Islamic-creationist, Adnan Oktar, aka Harun Yahya.

We invite you to explore our Access Denied Map and learn more about censorship of popular web 2.0 websites in the world.

As a reaction to the court's decision to block access to the entire WordPress.com blogging platform in Turkey, following a libel action brought by the Islamic-creationist, Adnan Oktar, Great Firewall of Turkey activists launched WordPrexy.com project to make Turkish blogs hosted on WordPress.com accessible. WordPrexy is a WordPress-specific proxy server that mirrors the content of WordPress.com:

What we do at WordPrexy.com is basically offer an easy to use proxy service to bypass the blocking of WordPress.com in Turkey. What we don't do is copy your content and serve it as ours, or host it on our servers. We have neither the capacity nor the financial sources to do so.

But what is funny, and scary, is that WordPrexy could be used elsewhere in the world as well, like in Thailand where wordpress.com also has been blocked. Actually, WordPrexy clones every single Wordpress.com hosted blogs, even the WordPress.com home page. So if your blocked blog is hosted on Wordpress.com, WordPrexy has already a clone of it.

For the second time in a year, a Turkish court ordered, on Tuesday September 18, to block access to YouTube.com over videos deemed insulting to the country's leaders.

The decision followed a complaint by a resident in the eastern city of Sivas that the site hosted videos containing insults against Turkey's founding father Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, President Abdullah Gul, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan and the army.

It's a tumultuous time for youtube in Turkey. A wave of controversy over an ultra nationalist video, posted on Youtube, praising the assassination of Turkish Armenian journalist Hrant Dink, has made its way to the country's most popular newspapers and… to the court. According to Turkish Daily News, Dink’s lawyers said that the video “incites people to commit hate crimes by abusing race and religion and by praising a murderer,” and that they are preparing to file a complaint about it.

On March of this year, the country’s largest telecommunications services provider, Turk Telekom, blocked access to YouTube, for two days, following a court decision deeming that videos appearing on the site were insulting to the father of modern Turkey, Kemal Atatürk, and to the Turkish people.

On August 17, 2007, the Turkish Fatih Second Civil Court of First Instance blocked access to the entire wordpress.com domain after alleged libel of Turkish Islamic-creationist, Adnan Oktar, aka Harun Yahya.

“Sorry. TOT Plc., as an organization of Thai people, has restrained the access to this website as it contains content, text, and/or picture that is unappropriated which affects the mind of Thai people all over the country and cannot be accepted.”
(Source: Prachatai.com| Global Voices Advocacy Blog)

On August 22th, 2007, access to wordpress.com blogging platform has been blocked by TOT (Telecommunication Authority) preventing Thai Internet users from accessing Thai Wordpress and all blogs hosted on wordpress.com. “A notice has been shown when trying to access any Wordpress page: “Sorry. TOT Plc., as an organization of Thai people, has restrained the access to this website as it contains content, text, and/or picture that is unappropriated which affects the mind of Thai people all over the country and cannot be accepted.”

In a recent update, Freedom Against Censorship Thailand (FACT) confirmed that “ until the evening of Friday 24 August, it is still impossible to access Wordpress.com from TOT service. The symptom is unpredictable, actually, as sometimes it can be access, but sometimes cannot.”

Lats week, on August 17, 2007, the Turkish Fatih Second Civil Court of First Instance blocked access to the entire wordpress.com domain after alleged libel of Turkish Islamic-creationist, Adnan Oktar, aka Harun Yahya.

Computer Crime Act Thailand