Turkey Has Reportedly Banned Google

oxide7 and a number of other readers sent word (from mostly non-authoritative sources as yet) that Turkey had imposed an indefinite ban on some Google properties. "Turkey's Telecommunications Presidency said it has banned access to many of Google IP addresses without assigning clear reasons. The statement did not confirm if the ban is temporary or permanent. Google's translation and document sharing sites have also been banned indefinitely along with YouTube and Facebook in the country. Other services such as AppEngine, FeedBurner, Analytics, etc., have also been reportedly banned." Some real-time commentary (much of it in Turkish) can be found at Twitter hashtag #TurkeyCensoringGoogle. We have noted in past years the censorious ways of Turkish courts.

Comments

Who's surprised?

[Vinegar Joe]

The Turks don't want anyone to talk, write or even think about Armenians or Kurds. And they don't care for Jews all that much either.

Oh yes they did.

[unity100]

'Telecommunications and Communication Ministry' has placed a ban on various ips of google, ranging from google analytics to youtube.

despite the cause on the surface is shown deragotary videos of kemal ataturk on youtube, nothing could justify banning analytics ips. so, in the end one of the ministers slipped the real reason - google doesnt pay tax to turkey.

there is no reason why it should either. google is a corp that is centered in america, and according to treaty to prevent double taxation, it should not pay tax here, since it pays tax in usa. so there is no legal justification for trying to tax them.

but then again, you cant expect reasoning, or, abiding by laws, from an islamist government.

As Someone from Turkey there is more to it

[stikves]

Unfortunately this kind of thing happens all the time, and the government cannot do anything about it. Even the president has criticized the ban last week, but it's all up to the courts.

According to Turkish law, *any* PA can ask for a preliminary injunction to ban *any* web site. The web site has to comply within a month, otherwise TK (which is the telecomunnication authority) will have to block the web site in question. Nobody (including prime minister, or the president) cannot stop the ban (unless the website complies).

So if a person from a small town complains about a web site (for example Youtube, or Blogger), and the PA for that town finds the case worthy, he/she request a court order for the ban. This has actually happened (Blogger was banned since some bloggers published world cup matches, and the local TV stations which bought WC rights have complained).

The Google ban comes from Youtube ban. Previously they only removed youtube.com from DNS servers, but people have installed alternate DNS servers, and all was fine. Now they decided to block based on server IP, which is probably shared with other Google services as well.

Anyways they are trying to amend the law, so that this kinds of bans will be restricted (not just any random PA in any random town), but the best would be abolishing the law altogether.

Critical Thought.

[headkase]

Can I be blamed for others lack of critical thought? The quote begins:

As the Americans learned so painfully in Earth's final century...

Anyone who is thinking as they read instead of blindly ploughing through the words would have realized that Earth has not reached it's final century yet?

And it was fully sourced too.. ;)