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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."
In a country like that, the secular government is going to have to produce laws that placate those that want to put the religious leaders in power.
Nope. Turkey has a history of suppressing the Islamic Fundamentalist Nutbags (IFN) to keep them out of power. This law is probrably aimed against the religious leaders rather than placating them.
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.