Slashdot Mirror
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.
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."
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.
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.
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.
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 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.
... 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...
I get it, you want to say that if Turkey wants to arrange ethnic cleansing it would be with the democratic consent of the suppressed groups.
Would it matter?