Turkish Finance Minister Defends Twitter Ban

An anonymous reader writes "Turkish Finance Minister Mehmet Simsek has defended his governments ban on Twitter and accused the social networking site of not complying with court orders. Simsek said: 'The Turkish telecommunications watchdog has made a number of statements saying that they have asked Twitter on a number of occasions to remove some content on the back of court orders and Twitter has been refusing to comply. I don’t think any global company, whether it’s a media company, whether it’s an industrial company, it shouldn’t see itself [as being] above the law.'" As a result of the ban, Tor gained over 10,000 new users in Turkey.

Comments

Above the law

[fustakrakich]

Everybody is above corrupt law.

Re:Above the law

[MickyTheIdiot]

It's interesting that this tactic has failed in every case going all the way back to the start of the printing press. If you make some sort of communication form illegal it just gets distributed more widely.

It tells you something about the caliber of people that get into office, doesn't it?

Re:Above the law

[Frobnicator]

Several countries have attempted to ban YouTube, Twitter, and similar sites. Most end up removing the ban within days. Some remove it within months.

Turkey is one of the countries that maintained a ban longer than most countries, with the YouTube ban lasting about 29 months. Wikipedia says that even with the ban, it was reported as Turkey's 8th most popular web site while DNS blocks were in place and government officials (including the prime minister and president, both the same people in power today) publicly discussed that they continued to use the banned site. Quite a few other web sites are banned as well, yet they still have a strong Turkish user base.

Turkey has a history of banning the interwebz through DNS blocks, and the people know how to get around it easily.

It isn't above the law

[Anonymous Coward]

It's based in the US. It's governed by US law, not Turkish law. Italy had a similar opinion and convicted three Google employees in absentia to no effect.

Re:It isn't above the law

[Anonymous Coward]

And that's exactly why the internet should not be governed by one country, and internet should fall under an independent law.

Re:It isn't above the law

[Anonymous Coward]

And Megaupload was not based in the US or NZ. So?

Welcom to the group - China, North korea and Iran

[schneidafunk]

I wasn't sure if Twitter was banned in China and had to look it up. Indeed it is, along with North Korea and Iran. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C...

The issue is not about compliance with the law

[kruach aum]

The issue is that laws mandating censorship run counter to the purposes of freedom and democracy. This minister is trying to shift the focus from the second to the first, and it nearly worked on me too because my first thought was "why should youtube care about Turkish law?" but that's completely irrelevant.

Re:The issue is not about compliance with the law

[Godai]

Actually, I disagree. Compliance with the law is the heart of the problem, the question is: whose law?

While I'm no fan Turkey's repressive laws, I do wonder how what Turkey is mad about differs all that much from the US or whomever complaining about pirated content being posted in countries where that's not illegal.

If country A does something we don't agree with, it's okay for technology to circumvent that. If country B does something we don't agree with, it's not okay for technology to circumvent that. The bottom line here seems to be less about technology and more: in a globally interconnected world, how do we decide what laws get applied where? So far it largely seems to be decided by the US leaning on anyone they don't agree with. You can bet if the positions were reversed, Turkey would be leaning on the US government to discipline Twitter. This works great if its something you agree with, and less so when its something you don't (maybe copyright laws). I could say we're fortunate that its the US with the Big Stick and not someone else, but maybe we only think that because we're in the West so we tend to align with our own values? And even if this works great, what happens when someone else takes possession of the Big Stick (China maybe?). Perhaps this won't be so appealing then?

Re:The issue is not about compliance with the law

[nusuth]

The situation in Turkey is not just another free speech banning law, making law maker and enforcers looking ridiculous. Not at all. There is a mindbogglingly huge corruption scandal going on. The prosecutors were removed from the case, police were ordered not to obey court orders, tens of thousands of civil servants have been relocated etc to stop the investigation. The extend and the number are both unbelievable, so I will leave it to look them up yourself (you would never believe an anonymous source on internet talking about 12 digits, would you?)

Now, when it became apparent that the prime minister had no intention to actually let courts do their job, the prosecutors (quite unlawfully) started leaking dozens of voice recordings of their evidence. So far we have learned that Mr. Prime Minister ordering newspapers what not to press, ordering his son to move hundreds of millions of dollars from his house, selling valuable land to his friendly businessmen, using tax law to crush unfriendly businessmen, ordering the police to increase tension during Gezi movement etc. Tomorrow is the big day. It is said that the PM will not be able to keep his post no matter what after the recording posted on 25th of March. The leaked tapes so far has been uncovered PM's behavior so unconstitutional and immoral that I cannot image what could possibly be so much bigger. The expectation is that either PM's ordering assassination of a opposition leader or he having sex with a minor. Whatever it is, it got PM panicked. This is what got actually twitter banned. There is a cover story, but it is so hastily constructed that *the cover story itself is unlawful.* The story is that a court banned twitter on for not complying, a court which is not authorized to do so, and a court which denies doing/trying to do so.

So whatever your ideas on different lands having different customs and laws, this is not the event to discuss them. Twitter ban in Turkey is 100% wrong.

Controlling the Message

[bill_mcgonigle]

Coincidentally, the pro-government media just happened to have its cameras pointed at the spot where a Syrian jet would invade Turkish airspace yesterday and get shot down with a 'satisfying' plume of black smoke.

If somebody has that list of 'steps to totalitarianism' handy, please link it. "Convince the people of an outside threat" is pretty close to the top.

Re:Controlling the Message

[MickyTheIdiot]

The early 21st century is starting to look like the early 20th century.

Re:Welcom to the group - China, North korea and Ir

[Anonymous Coward]

Twitter is not banned in North Korea. They just ban the entire Internet.

Opportunity for Twitter to play politics...

[Entropius]

"Okay, we'll stop our users from calling your government a poopyhead, or whatever. In return? Don't let Russian-flagged ships through the Bosphorus until they leave Crimea."

Re:USA sets the example here

[Guybrush_T]

Agreed.

And besides, Twitter may be hosted in the US, if they want to do some business in Turkey, they have to obey to turkish laws - or risk a ban. The government filtering does the right thing : remove most of the traffic which makes it a (potentially) profitable company.

The fact that the court order is good or bad has little to do here. If some court decided that a message is illegal (harassing, threatening, racist, ...), Twitter has little right to decide if they agree or not if they want to make some business in the country.

I don't see what is so strange that a government ban illegal (in their laws) websites. You can discuss the court order, you can discuss the law, but the fact that Twitter did not comply to the court order is a political decision (with consequences).

A lot of peopel in Turkey

[invictusvoyd]

Are gonna have the cold turkey

In related news

[korbulon]

Turkey to create an alternative social messaging service: gonna call it "Gobbler".

Opposite Result

[SuperKendall]

And that's exactly why the internet should not be governed by one country

The problem with that statement is, when you don't have a single entity governing with reasonable protection of free speech (like the U.S.) the alternative is a U.N. like panel stacked with all sorts of countries that all think it's perfectly reasonable to censor some speech.

Having an "independent law" in reality means Turkey has MORE of a say, not less, in what that independent law states about what Turkey can tell Twitter to do.

Deja Vu (Again)

[trydk]

Interesting debate. Not new, but still interesting.

If Twitter does not comply with Turkish law, it is considered natural, since Twitter is based in the US of A and thus not governed by Turkish law. When BETonSPORTS did not comply with American law, their CEO, David Carruthers was arrested in 2006 when in transit to Costa Rica and the following year, founder Gary Kaplan was arrested in the Dominican Republic and extradited to USA — all this despite BETonSPORTS was based in the UK and thus not governed by American law.

Tsch, tsch!

Re:USA sets the example here

[Quila]

Therefore I love all the comments on Turkey's government being bad, while we live under the same shit.

Tell me when you can get arrested in the US for reminding your people of a well-known US historical event, and you will start having equivalence.

Tor not that popular

[IamTheRealMike]

Tor added 10,000 users which for a country the size of Turkey is lost in the noise. Meanwhile a commercial competitor, HotSpot Shield added about quarter of a million Turkish users in just 12 hours. It'd be nice if the Tor guys made a version that relaxed some of the ultra-paranoid things they do and made a single-hop proxying service for users who don't care much about anonymity and just want to evade censorship.

Re:Welcom to the group - China, North korea and Ir

[schneidafunk]

I did indeed. I reread it, and I think the wiki is wrong for the SK portion. South Korea has banned specific accounts but not the whole site: http://www.theguardian.com/tec...