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Turkey's New Far-Reaching Censorship Law
nautical9 writes: "Wired is reporting that Turkey has just passed a law severely limiting freedom of expression. ISP's can be fined astronomical amounts for something as vague as 'airing pessimism.' It also requires new sites to 'apply' to the government for permission to go online. Amazing the lengths some will go to squash anti-government sentiment."
ANKARA, Turkey -- After a 10-hour Turkish parliament session during which a scuffle was averted, a media law severely limiting freedom of expression on the Web passed with no change early Wednesday.
How come the interesting bits never get expounded upon? I mean, sure, it's a good hook sentence, but there's no other details in the article about it. Shame.
people, please realize something.
Turkey is not the United States. It's a completely different country (shocking isnt it?). There is no such thing as a First Amendment in Turkey.
a country thats trying to join the EU
Wouldn't it be nice if schools got all the money they wanted and the army had to hold jumble sales for guns
Amazing the lengths some will go to squash anti-government sentiment."
Not at all amazing.
If the "some" happen to be those enjoying the fruits of the current government's existence, they'll go to lengths to keep the status quo.
It's always been that way, everywhere.
"Provided by the management for your protection."
Airing pessimistic and anti-linux or pro-DMCA
comments can incur severe fines. These fines include, but are not limited to, a loss of karma and subsequent reduction in one's personal right to participate in the democratic activity known as moderation.
You must be kidding, or a catholic priest after our children...
He tried to kill me with a forklift!
Christian governements? How about non-denominational gorvernements. Let's assure freedom for everyone, not just the christians.
Now that Turkey's internet restrictions are official, might I suggest that they contact Cisco to firewall off their entire nation in order to further guarantee the prohibition of free expression. Maybe something like China's firewall.
While they're at it, maybe they should contact Yahoo to help monitor every discussion group in Turkey so those not thinking (expressing) happy thoughts can be re-educated.
-Turkey
-Turkey
I really like Turkey. I speak a little and I've visited twice. I think it's a really cool place to vacation, especially if you're short on cash.
There's just a couple of things you have to remember about Turkey:
1) Don't even think of using, buying, holding, or even thinking about illegal drugs (Midnight Express is a true story).
2) Turkey is a strongly secular state. Islam is the predominant religion and people are quite religious, but the populace is quite proud of their separation of church and state. They used to arrest people for wearing Fezzes (when we all know that laffing at them would have the same result)
3) The Founder of Modern Turkey, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk [yeah, I know I'm missing the umlaut], is revered in Turkey. He's like Washington, Lincoln and FDR combined. His face is on all the money; his picture is in most houses and businesses. He established Turkey as a republic after WW I, he secularized the government, he romanized the alphabet (and dramatically improved literacy) and sought to make Turkey a modern western nation. It's a crime to insult him, almost 80 years after his death.
4) Turkey is fiercely nationalistic. Their oppression of Armenians and Kurds is legendary and their invasion of Cyprus put them at war with fellow NATO ally Greece.
5) Like a friend of mine in Turkey once said "Turkey believes in a Free Market, but not a Free Press".
In other words, Turkey's been fighting all types of foreign influence ever since their independence. They've never been particularly keen on civil liberties, but they've been allies to the US forever because (a) their proximity to the Caucasus during the Cold War and (b) their proximity to the Middle East. [They border the former USSR, Iran, Iraq, and Syria].
A modern country: maybe, a free country: not really, a good place to be an anti-government protestor: no.
My father is a blogger.
In case this is not a troll, two points:
1) Turks are not Arabs
2) I speculate that the reason behind this law is to supress the Islamic Fundamentalist Nutbags, not cater to them.
I know that people prefer to read news that directly affects them, but it just seems ridiculous that the smallest POTENTIAL infringements of free speech in the US or the UK make the front page of Slashdot every day, but astronomical infringements of free speech in smaller countries get tossed into the bin of obscurity that is the Your Rights Online section.
Couldn't you guys just give these stories a try some time and see if they spark any real discussion? I have a feeling that they would.
Go burn a cross, you fucking Nazi cunt.
the bill of rights was written by Christians, and all of the founding fathers professed to be Christian. the first amendment says "Congress shall make no law" infringing on the rights of religion, speech and press. note the use of the word "religion", not "Christianity" or "Catholicism" or somesuch thing. it's a Christian-created governmental system and seems QUITE non-denominational.
grey wolf
LET FORTRAN DIE!
Turkey is predominantly Islamic. muslims run the country. they're not suppressing the IFNs you refer to, but the Christians both within and without the country. to keep their children "unpolluted." just like in china. and any other country that enforces strict censorships like this.
and if you think i haven't done the homework, wake up and smell the cheese. i'm probably more right than you want to admit.
grey wolf
LET FORTRAN DIE!
Some years ago I lived and worked in Turkey as a windsurfing instructor. Beautiful women and good dope can be had but you have to be very very careful there. The thing is to make sure you have enough money to buy yourself out of jail if you get into trouble.
This repression on the net thing will not last very long. Turkey has been trying for years to get into the EU and the EU has set some very strict limits as to what it will accept from Turkey in the way of censorship and repression. Turkey will have to drop this law to get into the EU.
see: Amnesty International
The country is famous for its torture. It has more than 10.000 political prisoners, many of them journalists etc.
Those who know the country are not shocked by this, like i said it is the nature of the terrorstate Turkey is.
The Grey Wolves Are a bunch of murderous killers. They are the footsoldiers of the fascist MHP, responsible for numerous killings. How can you carry that name?
It has a cooler acronym than CBPTBwhatever :-)
Bzzztttt!!! Thanks for playing! Actually most of them were Deists. Big difference. I'll generalize here and state that Christians and Muslims are [generally] the only intolerant religious groups.
"What is the sound of one belly slapping?"
... I must say that we're all shocked by this. This law will obviously change very soon. In the meantime, it will not be obeyed. (As expected)
According to the US State department, Turkey was officially neutral during WWII.
After Hitler invaded Bulgaria and had conquered France, Turkey (probably wisely) decided to remain neutral. In 1941, nobody was going to come to their aid if they joined the Allies.
Ok, so 'Forever' might be a little strong... How about 'since WWII.
Also, the Ottoman Empire was the Ally in WWI, not Turkey. The Turkish Republic came into existence because of the weakness of the Ottoman Empire.
But you are right. The Armenian 'ethnic cleansing' / Genocide perpetrated by the Turks was inspiration for people from Hitler to Milosevic and Saddam.
=========
My father is a blogger.
I wonder if this new law was caused by Naom Chomsky. He went into turkey and gave a speech about the Kurds and the govt went haywire, and banned all his books. Well Chomsky is all over the net so I guess they took the next step.
BTW these laws dont have much effect. If you have:
1. a friend on the outside
2. use of good encryption
3. a personal computer that is free of surveilance
you can escape all internet cencorship schemes. All you do is set up your friend on the outside as a proxy (i am not sure if proxy is the exact tech term) and make sure all communications between him and you are encrypted.
There are many people that will setup those proxies to help others evade cencorship. I would if i could afford the bandwidth.
TWW
"Encyclopedia" is to "Wikipedia" what "Library" is to "Some people at a bus stop"
Yes ofcource, but ist is also the name of the terrorist organisation MHP. Fascist butcherclan in Turkey. See the link i supplied.
My point was that perhaps he likes wolves; I got the impression you thought the name should be shunned because some wankers in Turkey use it too.
"Encyclopedia" is to "Wikipedia" what "Library" is to "Some people at a bus stop"
a fascist nation. Hitler probably got much of his inspiration for the 3rd reich from the Turks. YOu may call me a troll, but learn more about them and you will see what I say is true.
... that turkey has had kurdish heads of parliament and kurdish prime ministers... I don't recall many prominent political figures of jewish origin in germany, for example...
Turkey did not fight in WWII. They got in at the last minute, on the side of the winners, to benefit from the end results. As for WWI, present day Turkey cannot be held responsible for anything that the Ottoman Empire of the day might have done (including Armenian killings & deportation), any more than modern day Italy and Italians can be held responsible for atrocities (including feeding slaves to lions in theaters) of the Roman Empire.
I don't understand what your sentence means (really), but you are right, it probably does not matter.
Turkey is a country trying to stumble along on the road to a western style democracy. Not only have the poor bastards started rather late, but they also have the additional misfortune of having taken on the religion of the Arabs some centuries ago. I just don't think it is fair to attack this country on the basis of some deportation/killing of their Armenian populace (who really should not have conspired with the Russians) at the time of WWI, the sins of which should be on the late Ottoman Empire and not on Turkey.
As for the Kurdish problems, granted that the state policy is not only oppressive but also stupid, at the wake of 9/11 you might begin to appreciate how a state might feel compelled to use force in fighting a terrorist organization (a separatist one) whose pyromaniac tendencies have cost upwards of 30,000 lives in the past decade.
I'll generalize here and state that you anti-US and anti-western bias is so obvious that even your pseudo-intellectual pasturing is unable to hide that fact.