Slashdot Mirror
Turkey Censors YouTube
FM Reader writes "After a controversial mock-up video reportedly submitted by a Greek member about Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, the founder of modern Turkey, Turkish courts ordered the national ISPs to ban the online video service, YouTube. YouTube hostnames are currently redirected at the DNS level to a page that announces the court order."
I think this is about the stupidest thing I have heard from Turkey for a long time (not that I hear much from there). Seems the courts and government doesn't agree on if Turkey should work on tying to become part of the European Union.
Things like these are going to be a problem a serious problem in any negotiations, I can hardly think of any way to demonstrate more clearly that freedom of speech is not something that is not practiced in Turkey.
Thinking about it I find it a bit ironic that the country I live in, Denmark (member of the EU) have done exactly the same thing with allofmp3 that Turkey now did to youtube, yet Denmark is probably quite well known for their so called defense of freedom of speech, latest demonstrated by some drawings of Muhammed.
I guess the reasons behind the two court ordered bannings are a bit different.
In Turkey the reasons being nationalistic and religious, while it in Denmark is the music industries (and according to them also the artists) interest and money that is the reason (one could maybe then start arguing that we just have a different kind of "state religion" in Denmark, I will keep out of that discussion).
Anyhow I kind of understand if the Turkish negotiators will think of the EU as talking with two tongues if they start telling them that Turkey can't do this kind of thing if they want to be part of the EU.
This is actually quite in line with what many nations in the EU would do. I mean, just yesterday we had a story posted to Slashdot about France apparently outlawing the filming of violence. Leading EU member nations like Germany, France and Austria also have rather draconian "hate speech" legislation. Censorship is a European way of life. Most Europeans like to think that they're free to speak their mind, but in reality that's not the case.
Mustafa Kemal Ataturk replaced something. Why don't you check out what he replaced. You will understand VERY clearly why he's a saint in Turkey.
I don't care what he did. Winston Churchill did great things when he lead Britain to defeat the Nazis, yet I can call him a fat drunken slob without fear of recrimination if I so desire. That's what freedom's about: not having to care about offending people just because they did something important.
Turkey is a place where 'holy state' concept still lingers on. Anything said against the state, or 'holy' values instantly justifies and extreme measures - like banning of a whole mega site from ALL users in an 60 million nation.
it doesnt matter what purpose for the site is generally used or not - just say something that is not to the liking of the state, and voila, all is gone.
Turkey is not a modern country by any means unfortunately. Everything is shown to be in that direction by the turkish negotiators to european union, however suppression of the citizens by the government still continue on.
Recently, if you remember, a list of 30+ games including Knight online, counterstrike, halflife and such were banned in turkey from internet cafes with the state decision, citing reports from obscure, unknown local academician's reports that said 'these games teach kids violence'. These reports were given on the fly, with demand from government, in a few hours without any research. Simple as that. An executive decision that took half a day for the governmental bureucracy to take and implement.
Same goes for anything else - citizens are pariah to the state in turkey. If you go to get something done in a local government branch, the appointed/elected authority holders scorn over you, elected representatives of the assembly behave like they are local feudal lords, not as normal people elected to serve people. The current Finance Minister passes out FOUR laws in order to erase HIS OWN COMPANY'S tax debts to government, and nobody can oppose it. A newspaper/television says something not to the liking of the ruling party, and suddenly finance ministry starts a thorough and not-by-the-book tax examination of that newspaper/televison to suppress them.
Recently a law was prepared and proposed in order to make it much more easy for government to control what is being said on the internet, with the help of a certain media group's fud-spamming, saying that 'internet is evil and needs to be straightened out'.
Unfortunately this is turkey for you.
Read radical news here
As noted in other posts, you can't criticize the Turkish government unless you want to be arrested. How do you tell a government that it's done something stupid if you can't do so, even a little bit, without being arrested?
The answer is simple: You leak the information to the world and let them do it for you.
"If you make people think they're thinking, they'll love you; But if you really make them think, they'll hate you." - DM
If the disinformation and off-topicality are what bothered you, then why didn't you simply 1) Point out the errors, like the number of Armenians generally accepted as killed 2) Point out the non relatedness of the genocide to the topic at hand? The link you used, as the poster below me pointed out, is anything but unbiased, and even in your response you questioned the genocide's proper legal classification, as if to say we shouldn't be calling it a genocide, when just about every country other than Turkey calls it that. Whether or not you realize it, but in your attempt to counter the padded body count, you just defended the stance that attempts to downplay or deny the Armenian genocide.
damaged by dogma
Here's a western-oriented Muslim country with a democratic secular government it imposed on itself.
Actually, it was imposed by the Turkish army. And every time the government has gotten out of line, the army has put it back.