Slashdot Mirror
Blogger.com Banned In Turkey
petermp writes "A Turkish court has blocked access to the popular blog hosting service Blogger (Blogger.com and Blogspot.com, owned by Google), since Friday, October 24th, 2008. According to BasBasBas.com, a Dutch blogger based in Istanbul, who alerted readers about the issue: 'It is suspected that the reason for this has something to do with Adnan Oktar, by some considered the leading Muslim advocate for creationism, who has in the past managed to get Wordpress, Google Groups, as well as Richard Dawkins' website [banned].'"
Can we expect to see thousands of people download a PHP blog script and host their own?
You can block Blogger, but in its place will grow thousands of pages, you cannot stop them all! (but you can easily identify the creators I suppose).
This seems like a very irrational decision, surely this will be appealed.
I have to say, I'm really surprised this is happening in Turkey. Turkey is actually a fairly westernized country, and while it is predominantly Islamic, it is quite progressive on religious issues. Its constitution even guarantees freedom of religion (and Turkey has no official state religion), and since 1924 has maintained a secular government. I was led to understand that there is strong opposition in Turkey to the government interfering in matters of religion, but perhaps that is no longer the case for whatever reason...
If you have followed events in Turkey this does not come as a surprise. Let's hope they will never be allowed to join the EU.
on this bus
fracking religion what good has it ever done
sigh
I'm from Turkey. As far as I know bans happen this way: If court decides that the content is illegal (attacking personal rights, advertising drugs etc.) they contact the owner of the site and demand the content to be removed. If the owner doesn't comply they ban the site. Previously bans happened by modifying DNS data of the de facto ISP monopoly in Turkey and redirecting sites to another page with legal information. This was easily circumvented by using another DNS. Then they started blocking IP addresses. Interesting thing is they don't block IP addresses of all banned sites. They only do this to popular sites and I believe courts are not deciding this. Someone outside courts decides that they must do IP blocking or not.
The law which orders bans also have a precaution clause which permits getting a site banned before court decides that the content is illegal or not. Bad guys uses this legal loophole to ban web sites easily.
We'll be seeing the same thing happening in the United States after Barry Hussein O'bama is elected President
Hussein has already banned interviews with a TV station in Florida because the station's reporter had the gall to ask Joe "The Senator" Biden some tough questions.
Fata viam invenient.
As a Turkey citizen all I can say is this sucks a lot, but does not surprise me a little. YouTube is banned for months and the ban won't seem to be lifted soon.
Never learn by your mistakes, if you do you may never dare to try again
The modern western turkey was founded by Ataturk and is currently enforced by the military. The democracy part of Turkey ONLY exists as long as it does what the military wants and in the past the military HAS intefened several times when the elected leaders did NOT do what it wants.
The sad and confusing thing is that from a WESTERN point of view it is the MILITARY that is right and the public/voter/elected leaders who are wrong. It is the MILITARY that wants a STRICT seperation of church and state, even going so far that Turkey is NOT an islamic nation. It has NO STATE RELIGION. There is equality, press freedom etc etc. Because the military says so.
The voter however in recent years has been increasingly voting for religious parties. The reasons for this are complex. Part of the problem is that the current system works to well. In those cases people tend to forget what brings them their current prosperity. Turkey is doing amazingly well but it is a bit like the US where places like New York and LA are being outvoted by the people from the bible belt. So, right now the country is being torn. If the voter is allowed to elect religious leaders then that is the democracy that the EU wants in its members BUT it would also mean Turkey slides into an islamic nation the EU does NOT want on its borders. Allow the military to keep the current system and Turkey is dictatorship in all but name, something the EU could never allow a member to be.
As for the individual Turk, well, there is of course no such thing. You might as well label all US slashdotters along with that comment in Oprah story yesterday where she was considered new age because she said there might be more then one way to heaven then through jesus. The religious right is on the rise. Turkey is struggling with its desire to be a democracy and the risk this would cause it to slide into a islamic dictatorship.
It does raise the intresting question, if people elected their dictators, is it still a dictatorship? Make no mistake, the people who protest this bloggers ban are NOT intrested in democracy. They want to turn Turkey into an Islamic state where the islamic law rules. They just know that their best bet to get this is through the voting booth because any violent means to do this would be opposed harshly by the military.
Westerners find this hard to understand. We are used to thinking of the military as the opressors. Not the guardians of freedom.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
I followed the link you posted, those are truly interesting ideas they are raising.
The most interesting point someone raised was this: if religion gets so many subsidies and tax breaks, shouldn't atheist organizations be entitled to the same treatment?
it has been revealed that it was digiturk, a paid satellite tv company broadcasting live soccer matches -one of the most lucrative businesses in turkey, who had the blogger banned. justin.tv and et al have been diminishing their prospective profits for some time and blogger posts with embedded flash widgets, for direct watching mind you, had been the first virtual spots they decided to attack.
Hi,
As far i know,this has nothing to do with religious or scientific matters.
Blogger was shut down due to copyright infrigement;Digiturk, a satellite tv provider, asked some blogs to remove their content but when this did not happen,they chose to shut down all the blogs.
Which is admittedly an idiotic move...
BTw,people please stop bringing up Eu at every subject about Turkey.
And there are people who still argue that Turkey should be allowed to join the EU. We have enough problems as is, let us not compound them by giving (more) religious zealots power in Europe.
First of all, no one knows why the site was banned. The article admits it's pure speculation. Secondly, if the article's hypothesis is correct then unlike what some comments are suggesting, it was not to crackdown on anti-Islamic views but the exact opposite. A prominent Muslim creationist has apparently been promoting his views on Blogger so it's been banned, like other sites he posted on before. That's the theory.
And seriously, you're saying that Turkey shouldn't be allowed in the EU because it restricts "freedom of speech"? What about Austria and Germany, where it's a punishable offence to deny the holocaust? They've arrested an Australian citizen for doing exactly that. Clearly Austria and Germany should be thrown out of the EU. What's ironic about Austria is that the neo-fascists there have recently had resounding success at the elections. But that's another story.
No it's not about Adnan Oktar, suprisingly. It's all about streaming soccer games and corporate stupidity. Some blogger blogs offer links to streaming media, so the corporation which has a monopoly on soccer game viewing access (yeah, bravo sierra is written all over it) gets pissed off and blocks whole nine yards of blogger. Greed is evil, wherever whenever.
Electronic Liberties must be defended at all costs!
http://counterknowledge.com/?p=223
http://counterknowledge.com/?p=157
http://counterknowledge.com/?p=72
He seems to have a stranglehold over the Turkish courts, and is gradually silencing any and all outlets of dissent under flawed defamation and libel law.
Man wird am besten für seine Tugenden bestraft.
This ban isn't about religious extremism.It's about copyright infringement. Quite possibly,it was about soccer videos streamed on blog.
Let's see...
Using ideological disagreements as a reason to oppress or kill other people, even other Muslims? Nope.
Forcing women to cover themselves from head to toe and basically be reduced to the status of the family dog, and beating her mercilessly if she forgets her place? Nope.
Gouging out young womens' clitorises in the name of keeping them pure for the abusive pig-fucker that will eventually be chosen as their husband? Nope.
Casting rape victims out of the community? Nope.
Executing homosexuals? Nope.
Lying to the western media while inciting genocide in front of the local media? Nope.
Banning alcohol, even in moderation? Nope.
Gunning down Theo Van Gogh and pinning an Islamic hate tract to his chest with a knife? Nope.
Burning cars and murdering random people en masse every time Muslims perceive the tiniest slighgt against their religion or their pedophile "prophet" (i.e. Dutch cartoons, Paris riots)? Nope.
Let's face it, Muslims. It's time to grow up, leave your 12th century beliefs behind, and join the rest of the adult world.
Right here in the US:
Government computers used to find information on Joe the Plumber
"State and local officials are investigating if state and law-enforcement computer systems were illegally accessed when they were tapped for personal information about "Joe the Plumber."
Samuel Joseph Wurzelbacher became part of the national political lexicon Oct. 15 when Republican presidential candidate John McCain mentioned him frequently during his final debate with Democrat Barack Obama.
The 34-year-old from the Toledo suburb of Holland is held out by McCain as an example of an American who would be harmed by Obama's tax proposals.
Public records requested by The Dispatch disclose that information on Wurzelbacher's driver's license or his sport-utility vehicle was pulled from the Ohio Bureau of Motor Vehicles database three times shortly after the debate.
Information on Wurzelbacher was accessed by accounts assigned to the office of Ohio Attorney General Nancy H. Rogers, the Cuyahoga County Child Support Enforcement Agency and the Toledo Police Department.
This is thuggish intimidation with the express purpose of suppressing criticism of Barack Obama and his policies of "share the wealth", otherwise known as "Socialism" and/or "Marxism".
And there's a really comforting pattern of misconduct when it comes to Barack Obama:
Chief of firm involved in breach is Obama adviser
The CEO of a company whose employee is accused of improperly looking at the passport files of presidential candidates is a consultant to the Barack Obama campaign, a source said Saturday.
Nice.
Fear for your freedom as well as your wallet.
One wonders how many times the story of this invasion of Joe the Plumber's privacy has been submitted to Slashdot.
It is amazing how much stuff people make up just to confirm their prejudices be they some vague anti-Turkish feeling or some anti-religion thing.
As it turns out, the real reason in this case was intellectual property. Some pay-per-view broadcaster secured an injunction on the grounds that the blog-hosting companies were not cooperating in preventing the dissemination of info about P2P TV carrying 'their' content. Here's a link in Turkish:
http://turk.internet.com/haber/yazigoster.php3?yaziid=22155
The reason of the Blogger ban is pirated football matches. Not about anything you talked about... The judges don't know anything about internet and Blogger.com. So they ban entire blog or video services because of 1 or 2 blog or video on them... Silly?.. Yes...
The ban is not about Adnan Oktar or some religious subject but simply is about Digiturk which holds the right to broadcast the Turkish Football Super League.
Digiturk claims that the bloggers illegally streams the matches (you have to buy a receiver and a special card in order to view the Turkish Super League) from internet via their blogs.
Therefore they appeal to court and court bans the whole sites ending with ...blogspot.com abd blogger.com. Therefore the complete blogger has
been banned.
I admit that this is totally bullshit but not everything in Turkey is not about religion etc.
Best regards,
"anonymous coward".
It's not a government ban, but actually caused vy a loophole in the law. (It has never been a government ban, nevertheless it's embarrassing).
*Any* court can order the ban of *any* website in Turkey. It only takes a single prosecutor deeming the case worthy, and a judge accepting it.
So for example, you can complain "google is infringing on my intellectual property", and if the prosecutor buys it, the judge can put in a preliminary motion to ban google. The ISPs can not do anything about it (except for going for an appeal).
The related law is being questioned, and will probably be replaced soon. (Hopefully).
Contrary to the belief these incidents rarely have links to religion or religious beliefs.
Most of those sites are banned because they "insulted Ataturk" , insulted "Turkishness" or contains "personal insults", nothing to do with the religion or islam.
They are banned because current laws make it possible, you can sue a website, and say it has incorrect insults to you, prove it and court orders closing the whole domain, not the single page. Most of the time Turkish courts, lawmakers have no idea about internet and technology.
And believe me, Ataturk is a much much more sensitive and dangerous subject than religion in Turkey.
I suggest that the international community should ban Turkey from the internet.
That is the only logical solution.
That's a laugh. America has one of the worst human rights records of any country.
Actually, what's happening in the EU these days is quite akin to what happened in turkey.
Maybe this is the way they plan to blend-in into european regulations.
We've read about the plans the UK government is installing to "protect" citizens from THE TERRIBLE SECRETS OF SPACE^WTHE INTERNET.
Sadly, banning sites on a large scale is quit favorable to many other european governments.
I wish though, that bloggers from turkey find ways to evade those blockades, maybe even influence their government to keep free speech - well, free.
The problem is the laws that deal with media. Yes, there is an amount of censorship in Turkey that is actively being fought by activists. But shutting down an entire website is due to the inability to separate content from its delivery. Simply, there is no way to remove specific content from websites under the current law. The only way to ban that content is to block access to its website. That said, why it is so easy to declare content offensive, I have no idea. Apparently those "offended" are expert manipulators. Sad, and hopefully will be addressed by the parliament. But the thing is, most of the parliament is, in heart, favoring an agenda similar to Adnan "Hodja" (means cleric).
You need to get your facts straight before criticising things. For one thing, not all religions believe in gods, much less God. For another, quite a few actively encourage trusting life to take its course, rather than worrying about it.
first, the law requires banning of an entire site based on a single page content. it cant make the distinction.
second, the banning are generally tied to (for now) court orders resulting from court cases. like adnan oktar's, his lawsuits are generally based on defamation charges. some other lawsuits (not oktar's) are based on copyright charges.
so what happens is, a charge is filed in court, court decides, youtube, for example is banned. sometime passes. and that case is resolved, youtube is unbanned again. but 2 hours later, another court case's order comes active. youtube is banned again. and then reopened. and this goes on like that.
couple this with the anti-modern, anti-secular, anti-liberties moves of islamist government that is supported by neocon bush administration in united states, and unfortunately, for god knows why, supported by Eu as being a 'democratic' government, and the censorship board that they instituted which can now even ban anything without any court order, you can see the horror.
its unbelievable. for 80 years, this country has tried to modernize itself, and it did, to a great extent. and all that modernization and westernization is being undone by an islamist party that is appallingly supported by united states, and european union. and the reason they support it is even more appalling : 'its a democratical government'.
theyll see what happens when turkey has been made into an islamist country in 20 years' time. it will be disastrous, since turkey is not an underdeveloped country like afghanistan or iraq, or with low population.
but the contradictory, self conflicting behaviour of Eu is what annoys me the most.
Read radical news here
Oktar not like blogging. Oktar smash internet!
otherwise would mean that you are either full of shit, or dont know zit about what you are talking.
entire armenia, until persian lands were under turkish control by that time. and leave aside armenians in general, the population of eastern anatolia and caucasian region wasnt even a number that could be counted by millions.
that being said, you have to really read and do research on anatolian history, for you dont know shit.
highway banditry (in a fashion of robin hood, but not that romantic and beneficial) was a way of life in anatolia since 1500s. wanted to make an easy living ? why, just become a highwayman. easy life easy gain.
a lot of ethnicities, regardless of their nationality have taken to that kind of living.
this hase taken a whole new meaning in 19th century with the advent of nationalism. now, highwaymen had an excuse -> whereas in earlier centuries it was taken as something despicable by societies of all kinds, now you had the nationalism excuse -> whatever you do , you are doing it for your nation ! easy prey -> just go prey on ethnicities other than yours, and you are both free in conscience and your ethnicity can still approve you.
this has occurred in places ranging from croatia to armenia. all ethnicities had set up 'militias', all of which nothing more than highwaymen with a few exceptions. greeks slaughtered 30 k turks in athens during independence, then slaughtered countless bulgarians, serbs in the north. bulgarians and serbs did likewise to each other. turks also set up their own militia and slaughtered whatever ethnicity they were in feud with. WHOLE empire was in that state.
enter ww I and east anatolia. of the countless militias formed by armenians, kurds, turks, cerkez, arabs, kazzaks (name your pick here its countless), armenians were a more ruthless bunch, slaughtering even their own people if they didnt support them. when things got out of hand nationalist government of ottoman empire of the time decided to force a migration, so that the support for these militia would end. what they didnt calculate was the poorness of the region at that time. people had no clothes, no supplies, a lot of them died in the march.
but they were no exception. due to the same poverty, a turkish army of 30.000 strong has frozen to death in the same manner just in the same region 1 year ago.
poverty was the reality in eastern anatolia those days, and and the reality of the empire. only the people in istanbul and izmir were rather well off.
and, what is more surprising is that, of the well off people, there were quite a percentage that was armenian, greek, jew and other ethnicities in istanbul. that was the case because ottoman empire had laws that relegated certain trades and industries to minorities, as a tradition (That comes back from 1500s). therefore those people were exceedingly rich, living in mansions facing the straits.
IF there was ANY genocide, those armenians should be the ones who were to be slaughtered first. but nothing happened. despite there was NOTHING in those days to prevent the empire from slaughtering any kind of ethnicity in the country. armenians in the west kept living in luxury whereas poor armenians in the east died in the march out of poverty.
see, unfortunately youre full of shit that armenian lobby in west have spewed. although im not a nationalist, and generally annoyed by nationalists, i had to correct this and set the record straight. for your information, even armenian community in turkey finds what armenian lobby in west, especially u.s. is saying extreme and untruthful. that was why international armenian lobby has crucified hrant dink, because he said that they were too extreme.
Read radical news here
WHERE is military dictatorship in turkey, you moron ?
you must be talking about 1980 coup, that was done to PREVENT turkey from becoming an ISLAMIST dictatorship like IRAN.
immediately an interim government was set up, immediately a new constitution was prepared by experts and then put to vote of the ENTIRE country, and got approved, and in 2 years' time a new government was set up. in 1983 turgut ozal became the prime minister, which is the person that modernized turkey even further. nothing like greece being run by COLONELS for TEN years after a coup.
are you aware that if that coup didnt happen, europe would have an islamist dictatorship much like iran right under its nose ?
military in turkey has 2 duties : 1 - defend country from outside invaders, 2 - assure that country stays a secular democratic republic of western style.
Read radical news here
"This is a very stupid idea, why the hell should people be worried about "interpreting" the Koran and the Hadith? Do you place that burden on the Christians as well? Shit, leave people alone man"
Why the muslims should be worried about interpreting the Koran? Because a fair number of extremist muslims are already doing their interpreting and you can see the _violent_ results of it.
If you're stupid enough to believe the extremists would leave people alone, you can skip the rest of this post.
The moderate muslims keep saying "that's not what the Koran says", but the extremists say "we are right, that is what the Koran says".
Can both be right?
Given the level of violence the extremists are willing to do, I'd say the moderates should actively resolve the issue as soon as possible and provide a verse by verse refutation of what the extremists believe - show clearly that the Koran says the extremists are doing the wrong thing so that OTHER muslims less familiar with the Koran will know AND more importantly _why_.
As for the Christians, yes the Christians should be reading and understanding what the Bible says. If they have understood (not just a surface/cursory understanding) and find they cannot live with what it says, then they should not be Christians.
Lastly if Christians believe that the Bible is from God (or at least contains words from God) AND that God is good/loving. Then why should it be a burden as you say?
It should be a _privilege_.
military has never been dictatorial in turkey. in ALL the coups that have taken place in the last 40 years, military have acted to prevent country from going to an islamist or totalitarian dictatorship.
first major coup was in 1960, against adnan menderes (who is, curiously and coincidentally, the first islamist leaning leader in turkish republic's history - the current islamist party comes from his party's roots). adnan menderes had increasingly become dictatorial in the late years of his reign -> he first censored all opposing papers, and then shut them down. then he shut down the opposition party. then his party moved to create a party organization called 'vatan cephesi' (motherland front) that you had to join. even so, they were naming people out of census registry in the radios each night, saying that these people joined the motherland front. situation was going out of hand. so, military intervened, and hanged the 3 political leaders of that party. that has set an example for all extremists in turkey -> they havent been able to find the courage to radically change the secular modern republic for 20 years.
in 1980, things were out of hand again. extremism was abound, and extreme right and left organizations were killing each other, bystanders, anyone daily. the daily average death toll in the country was 200. yea, you heard that right, 200 people a day.
politicians of the time were doing NOTHING. just bickering. a moderate party, an islamist party, a nationalist party, and a social democrat party. all bickering and nothing.
things were going this way for the last 5 years. and military was warning about deteriorating security situation within the country for those last 5 years.
all political leaders of that time were saying was 'it will be democratically solved, democracy is strong blah this bleh that'.
nothing happened. they did nothing.
and when in 1980, a huge throng of islamists have sat down during the national anthem and booed the national anthem in konya in 1980, declaring that they wanted an iranian style islamist government, within 2-3 weeks' time military had taken control of the country and locked up the extremist leaders, and put an interim government and called a group of experts to prepare a new constitution to prevent extremism from being able to change anything.
1982 constituton was put to vote of the people. people were SO fed up with extremism and the chaos environment that it got a whopping 80% approval rate and was ratified. this is the constitution we have today, and this is the constitution that islamist party is trying to change so they can move ahead with islamist proceedings.
just 1 years later, in 1983, elections were held and a technocrat, turgut ozal, a western style free market evangelist was elected with a whopping vote total. and he furthered the country until islamist elements got rise again.
so today here we are. the islamist party is trying to get rid of the elements in constitution that prevent them from establishing islamist and pro-religion laws, saying that 'it is the will of the people' (only 38% first election, only 42% last, a lot of reactionary votes and a lot of election fraud).
what is stupefying is that, european union SUPPORTS them. they are in the delusion that, if you let everything be in turkey, it will just become a country like belgium. but the last 40 years' history of turkey says otherwise.
the going is not good. it is a cosmic joke that european union is supporting and harboring a party that wants to break turkey from all modern values and enlightenment ideals. leave aside being contradictory, its self damaging.
Read radical news here
have you EVER seen what is life like in islamist regions of turkey ? ha ? apparently you havent. if you did, you wouldnt be speaking about religious freedom not being present in turkey. also you would know what is oppression -> suppression of religion, or the harassment religion does to people.
i'd rather live in a military dictatorship any day, if i was to choose in between an islamist country or military dictatorship. not that there is any kind of military dictatorship in turkey tho.
you stupid piece of shit. if it wasnt for that military, europe would have an iran ten times worse than iran right under its nose. pray that that military exists and prevents islamicization of the country.
your ignorance is appalling btw. dont talk about other countries without knowing shit about them first. i learnt about st barthelemy's night so that i would be more authorized to talk about france for example. either spend similar effort, or shut the fuck up.
Read radical news here
Why would a creationist try to have websites in the USA banned? Creationism is more popular here than anywhere else in the world! As for Moslem vs. Christian, I don't really see a whole lot of difference. Of course, Oktar might...
"The biggest problem with communication is the illusion that it has taken place."
Let's work together instead of arguing on which country is better. The fact is, the situation sucks. Digiturk (not Oktar!) was able to get all of Blogger/Blogspot banned due to dated or poorly composed laws. It sucks, but it's the reality. What we need to do is spread the message, get it out in the open... A lot of media hasn't even picked up on it yet, I had to contact the media myself to get them to report on it (gave a short radio interview to radio 3FM in Holland this afternoon). Spread the news. Talk about it. Blog about it. Social bookmark it. Whatever you do. This is not just about Turkey and their laws, but the future of the internet. It cannot become acceptable that countries (or ISP's) block off parts of the internet on false pretenses. You can read the article on why exactly Blogger got banned in Turkey here: http://www.basbasbas.com/blog/2008/10/26/digiturk-causes-turkish-ban-of-bloggerblogspot/ No more speculation.
tweet tweet
Yeah, I'm not reading that impenetrable wall of rambling, incoherent text you smelly Turkish fascist. It's called a "paragraph". Look in to it.
Yes, like when people elected Hitler. It was a crooked election, there was a lot of political maneuvering involved, it's true, but it's still a fact that Hitler was elected, and, given the political situation in Germany at the time, he would probably be elected in an honest system as well.
The definition of "democracy" isn't one of elected politicians only, that word has the connotation of a just and fair political system, one where the rights of minorities are also considered. Democracy implies necessarily in the existence of a basic set of human rights. Otherwise, it would be demagogy.
So the guy who tries to correct the stereotyping is the guy spewing flamebait? Good modding there guys. Well done.
The problem with Turkey is that they're composed of a pro-Western ruling class and a pro-Islamic populace. The current state of affairs is a dictatorship on paper, but allowing more freedom would make it look more like Syria, Lebanon or Egypt. Then again, perhaps you can't impose the thirst for freedom into someone who doesn't want it.
To do list for Windows
Turkey like all countries with a star crescent on its flag practices relentless censorship. The sources below give a small glimpse.
http://www.institutkurde.org/en/publications/bulletins/pdf/specials/spno_which_turkey_for_which_europe.pdf
page: 10
THE MEDIA:
On the Official State Ideology's Service
Foreigners passing through Turkey or observers critical of certain political aspects of the country, are often shocked by the ultra-nationalist and militarist content of the principle Turkish media and the virulence of the press campaigns they orchestrate. At the same time they notice that certain media don't hesitate to criticise on or other of the Ministers or even the Prime Minister. To understand the Turkish system one must bear in mind that, apart from some publications of the Left or islamic opposition, the principle Turkish media are at the disposal of the State and its official nationalist ideology (Ataturkism).
The political police (MIT) and the General Staff, who have a whole network of influential "honourable correspondents" constantly keep watch over what they consider "the superior interests of the State" and launch orchestrated press campaigns against "the internal and external enemies of the country". Amongst the more famous victims of their campaigns: Nelson Mandela, "guilty" of having refused an Ataturk Peace Prize, which seemed to him rather out of place in a country that was martyrising its Kurdish population; Mrs Mitterrand, Senator Kennedy, the German Social-Democratic Party leader R. Scharping etc... Their network covering the media is sufficiently subtle to allow each paper to have some liberal editorial writers who criticise official policy from the standpoint of another idea of "patriotism". Those who cross the thin red line(criticism of Ataturk or of nationalism, defense of the Kurds) are promptly sacked, like Koray Diizgoren from Hurriyet, Ahmet Altan from Milliyet or Ismet Imset of the Turkish Daily News â" often following a simple phone call from an official of the Joint Forces General Staff.
Concentration of ownership also helps ensure a more efficient control of the media. Two groups share the bulk of the market. The Dogan Group, with the two mass circulation dailies Hurriyet and Milliyet, each of which has its own television network, and the Ding Group whose main standard bearers are the two dailies Sabah and Yeni Yuzyil as well as the ATV television network. The industrialists who control these two groups also have large interests in sectors which depend heavily on State and Army contracts. The General Staff, also regularly calls the Managing Directors of the newspapers and television stations for "briefings" in which they are told how to treat matters affecting national interests and defense. It is, for example, "inadvisable" to publish anything on "events in the South-East" (Kurdistan) apart from official Army communiques.
Finally, by a very generous policy of subsidies and loans on advantageous terms, the Government has been able to ensure the support of these media and their huge audience. The police and the courts can be left to stifle the few dissident voices, like the pro-Kurdish Ozgur Grundem, which was banned after the assassination of ten of its journalists and the blowing up of its premises by the police.
Despite the diversity of papers, publications, radios and televisions, those that really form public opinion are, with a few rare exceptions at the disposal of the State, its security organs and its official ideology. The "organs" only have to whistle and this powerful brain-washing machine gets under way to denigrate or vilify any opponent judged too iconoclastic, or to present as an enemy of the Turkish nation any foreign personality who dares to criticise excess of the Turkish Army or Courts or express a wish for an improvement in the fate of the Kurds in Turkey.
http://www.info-turk.be/360.htm#Breakdown ...
While the Turkish Military and the Government preparing for military action
Everyone is screaming censorship, but thats not it. They are saving themselves and the rest of the world. By Turkey not having access to blogger, all those people will no longer be made dumber by reading someones retarded online diary. The rest of the world will no longer have to be subjected to stupid blogs from Turkey.
No one has blocked the 3 blogs on the Internet that are actually useful, the other 4 billion useless online diaries will not be noticed when they disappear by anyone other than the emo that posts to them, and possibly a other emo's that cry with them after school.
We really do need to stop trying to shoehorn the censorship issue onto anything that we don't agree with. I can see how you might think this is censorship, but its not.
Nothing of value was lost in this ban, move on.
Persistent Volume manager for Kubernetes - https://github.com/dwimsey/openshift-pvmanager
(no text)
The World Wide Web is dying. Soon, we shall have only the Internet.
next time you are posting, grow some balls to post with your own identity, and with your own account you little racist. this turkish 'fascist' here has the balls to post with his own identity, whereas a 'liberal' democrat like you does not.
telling.
Read radical news here
Seriously, this isn't about Islam, or the Armenian issue, or Atatürk. This is about all of Blogger getting banned over intellectual property rights. That's it. I already posted the updated article in my previous comment. Let's stop the negativity.
tweet tweet
Turkey must improve it's constitution to force 'separation of church and state'.
Turkey must be more secular and allow other religions.
This idiot banning the internet needs to be outed as a religious leader which the constitution doesn't allow.
Turkish idiots voting these fools in need to be taught a lesson.
Ataturk was a GREAT leader who said NO to Islamic rule!
Heres the update on the situation: Itâ(TM)s now reported that it is not Oktar that got Blogger banned, but Digiturk, a subscription based digital TV platform that owns the rights to the live broadcasting of Turkish football league games. Apparently, Digiturk asked Blogger to take several blogs or blog entries down containing links to pirated transmissions of the live games. Blogger did nothing, Digiturk went to court and under Turkish intellectual property law, they managed to get Blogger banned completely, effectively banning millions of websites that have nothing to do with Turkish football or pirating. Leave it to turkey to ban an entire site becuase of soccer. *sigh
Trying to install linux on my microwave, but keep getting a kernel panic...
Since when has a simple statement of truth been a troll? Oh wait, its the truth about the US, we cant have that.
Carry on.
This is why we eat Turkey on Thanksgiving
There is a tv channel which has the soccer match rights. They put the matches encrypted. And there are some blogs on blogspot.com which publish these matches for free. For that reason, that channel made the case and tradically won, because of Turkish judges' ignorance.
That is not even related to religion or government or politics...
That's just money.
Digiturk users should stop using Digiturk and complain loudly for shutting down of whole blogger.com.
Pork chops , pigs blood deep holes lined with pig skin head first burriel
Ammm ... in the 20s there were 100,000 Greeks in Istanbul, now a few thousand. Minor Asia a million or two, where did they go ? The 50s pogroms ? What happened there ? Sure in Turkey according to you the Armenians are saying one thing but then you can go to jail for insulting ... Turkishness
Why do the religious nuts fear Richard Dawkins so much?
All he does is tell people to question their religion - he doesn't tell people to do anything besides thinking for themselves. Of course it means that people are very likely to abandon their beliefs if they actually thought about the stupidities inherent in any religion, the major ones in particular...
I guess independent thought is the enemy of any religion and to those in power because of it in particular.
It must be a power thing of some kind, the concept of forcing some aspect of your faith upon others. Muslims want us to not insult Mohammad by drawing him or referencing the pedophile nature of his marrige with 9 year old Aisha whom he called 'his favorite wife'. They also want non-Muslims to dress and act in certain ways, and actually feel free to call normally dressed western women for 'whores' because 'they are practically naked'. Christians have similar issues, and historically we only need to mention the Inquisition and the Witch hunts to show that they also have serious issues in letting non-Christians (and 'not enough' Christians as well) be in peace.
Why can't religious people just mind their own business and other people mind theirs? - Be happy in the belief that you will be saved because you 'have the faith' and let other people deal with their eternal damnation or whatever?
Hmmm... Just thought of that famous physics question about whether Hell is exothermic or not... If there are more than one religion in the world that believes that you'll go to Hell if you believe something else, it follows that everybody will go to Hell (maybe not the same Hell but still) so no matter what you do you'll be damned forever, and you might as well enjoy your time here on Earth before that one-way trip to Hell... ;)
"For every complex problem, there is a solution that is simple, neat, and wrong." -- H.L. Mencken (1880-1956) --
foa im a citizen of turkey and we can't even access to virb, imeem, youporn and many others. more than 2000 sites have been banned since last year (when the ruling party made a new law about internet crimes) its not just blogger. even ateizm.org (atheism discussion board) is banned. sopcast, tvu and justin.tv are also banned because of their p2p content. pathetic.
This is where Tor is very useful, and I hope there is a bigger movement in the underground over there, that lets people know this tool exists!
50s pogroms is an abomination greek diaspora invented and exaggerated. yes, there had been burnings of shops belonging to greeks, there has been assaults, beatings, but nothing like 'genocide' or anything. god forbid. can you imagine, something that is to reduce the number of an ethnicity from 100.000 to a few thousand will happen around 1950 in a major city in the world, and the world wouldnt be echoing the ensuing stampede ?
the number of greeks that were 100.000 reduced to a few thousand in the 1930s exchange that was agreed in between greece and turkey. a lot of greeks left turkey, and a lot of turks from greece came to turkey.
Read radical news here
is it. so you made yourself known.
/. moderation as an indicator of rightfulness or wrongdoing.
you behave much like a turkish nationalist. im not taking crap from nationalists here, and im not gonna endure crap from a greek nationalist in america either. if you want to bicker in that respect, go find yourself a nationalist of your understanding.
its appalling that you show
Read radical news here
Turkey's a dumbass country. They shouldnt be allowed in the EU until they learn what the democracy is.
Or (1) google "hotspot shield torrent" or (2) search on download.com for latest version.
It is a free VPN that protects users' identity and anonymity in accessing all uncensored content
Pzzzzzt ... you may like to do you own revisioning, but your own goverment does not see it that way.
... everything Greek has been destroyed. History is re-written and Kemal forbid if you disagree ...
In fact I was wrong, there were a lot more, an agreed number after the treaty of Lausagne. This population was destroyed, where the Muslims in Greece have flourished and have a much higher education than Turks. Greece treat muslims better than Turks. They have Mosques and Muslim schools. In Turkey
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_of_Lausanne
first, if i took three days' time off, i can create a wikipedia article blaming greeks for the destruction of atlantis. given enough lobbying cash, i can get a resolution condemning greece for the destruction of atlantis passed from u.s. congress.
second, its absolutely stupid to give any wikipedia article as a proof to anything. doing so in any serious online discussion ends the debate's respectfulness. you have done as such.
third, i cant spare any time for you. i advise you find yourself a nationalist to clash your shit with. this is the last reply you will get from me on this subject. have a nice day.
Read radical news here
This site is NOT banned in Turkey. My wife is living in Izmir and she can access the site. I cannot verify access from Istanbul, but it may be related to the ISP?
Amm ... If you don't care for this subject, you should never bother responding to begin with.
You are a closet nationalist. Your country has destroyed all evidence of a Greek community but you have a rational reason why that happened. The same goes for Armenians, now Kurds and a bunch of other cultures.
'ava nice day
Giorgis from Sydney Australia
(the world is a bigger and smarter place than you think)
G