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."
In response to inquiries from the press about censorship, Turkey responded, "Gobble Gobble!!! Gobble Gobble Gobble!!! Gobble Gobble. Infidel. Gobble Gobble"
Don't be ridiculous. Hate speechs laws in (some) EU countries might be harsher than in the US, but these laws are not in the same league as what Turkey is pulling off here. And when critisizing free speech in Europe, you might want to keep in mind cases like The Fishman Affidavit, in which the Dutch supreme court ruled that the right of the public to know about the practises of Scientology superceded the intellectual property of Scientology of their teachings.
Turkey, as a country, has what in a human would be diagnosed as pathological narcism. They just jailed a Kurd for six months for respectfully referring to convicted rebel Abdullah Ocalan as "Mr Ocalan". They brought criminal charges against their Nobel Prize winner Orhan Pamuk for mentioning a government-sponsored genocide almost 100 years ago. Turkey denies this holocaust.
Why do I say this? Just to make clear this new ruling is just a small symptom of a much wider problem. It shouldn't surprise us in any way, but merely drive home the point Turkey is currently rather distant from European ideas of how to apply state power. More insidiously, this new conflict also points at the ever-increasing difficulty of isolating minority opinions from outside critique - the only way to do it, ultimately, is the North Korean route. I don't think Turkey will do that - they have a very proud and nationalistic government, but it is not a dictatorship with the power to force the ever-increasing price of its ego issues on all of the population.
blow your mind already
The ironic thing is that Ataturk himself wasn't big on censorship. He was something of a liberal dictator, and was responsible for turning Turkey into a secular, liberal democracy. Turkey is the only Islamic country in the Middle East that works.