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Blogger.com Banned In Turkey

Posted by timothy on from the no-longer-young-turks dept.

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].'"

5 of 262 comments (clear)

  1. Turkey? by Guido+del+Confuso · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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...

    1. Re:Turkey? by CRCulver · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Its constitution even guarantees freedom of religion...

      Regrettably, this was never implemented well in practice, as both the Islamists and the secularists are suspicious of outside religious traditions, whether because they are not Muslim or because they are not "Turkish". Case in point, the attempts to wipe out Eastern Orthodox Christianity in Turkey. The law states that the Ecumenical Patriarch must be a Turkish citizen, and not brought from e.g. Greece or another Orthodox country, but the authorities have tried to shut down all Orthodox seminaries in Turkey so that it's increasingly difficult to raise up a successor.

    2. Re:Turkey? by camcorder · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Thank you now with this post, /. can be banned as well, and even *without needing court approval*. Since you were offensive to Kemal Ataturk.

  2. Re:Reality knocks by justleavealonemmmkay · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Let's hope they will never be allowed to join the EU.

    Let's hope they change their ways so that we wish them to join the EU.

  3. Re:Reality knocks by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Let's hope they will never be allowed to join the EU.

    Let's hope they change their ways so that we wish them to join the EU.

    Like a German comedian of turkish descent once said:

    What are you talking about? We're already here.