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Turkish Ministry Recommends Banning Minecraft -- Over Violence
An anonymous reader writes: Minecraft is known for a lot of things. It's a fantastic creative outlet and the digital sandbox of youngsters' dreams, for instance. The game has also been known to raise the ire of unrelated companies who somehow think all that creativity by gamers is something that can be sued over. It's known for amazing user-generated content, including games within games and replicas of entire cities. The nation of Turkey is known for very different things. It's a country that absolutely loves to censor stuff, for instance. And, thanks to recent developments, Turkey is also known as a great place to get a front-row look at the incredible violence done by the Islamic State in Syria and Iraq. But the Turkish government has a plan to keep its youngsters from witnessing too much violence: it is calling to ban Minecraft.
My kids will just play Call of Duty instead!
Soccer involves kicking a round spherical ball.
I'm afraid that children will confuse these balls for people's heads and then go around kicking people's heads in.
READY.
PRINT ""+-0
Back in my day we didn't have this internet or these downloadable games. We had a copy of basic and that was it. If we wanted games we wrote our own games in basic and we liked it that way. Kids these days are so spoiled they don't even have to think for themselves. They just download prepared thoughts from web sites. It's shameful I tell you what.
They should ban televising their parliament then if they don't want to expose people to violence.
Of course Minecraft is violent. Do you have any idea how many innocent instructions get executed to make it run?
Quattuor res in hoc mundo sanctae sunt: libri, liberi, libertas et liberalitas.
That will certainly help reduce the skyrocketing reports of domestic violence that current takes place in the country. (sarcasm)
-- Knowing too much can get you killed, but knowing who knows too much can make you rich.
If Turkish kids confuse minecraft animals with real animals, then their problem is with a lack of education, not with Minecraft.
Are you sure, it's the COUNTRY that absolutely loves to censor stuff - and not its (elected) government?
Turkey is a large and very diverse nation - been there twice so far and absolutely loved the parts around Istanbul we visited and the people we met. I just don't think it does the normal people there any justice to leave statements like "their country loves censoring" unchallenged.
While here in Europe there were some long post 9/11 discussions on whether muslim headscarves should be banned - at the same time in (muslim) Turkey, there were demonstrations against the government, because their government wanted to LIFT a headscarf ban at Turkish universities.
So moral guardians want veto power over game content, with spurious justifications . . . the articles in the "You may like to read:" section are particulary relevant this time.
Really sad situation there. I visited last year and three years before then. It has changed a lot and it looks almost inevitable now that the secular state will be rolled back. Syria also used to be a tolerant multicultural country that tourist would visit.
Personally I just find the problem to be religion in general. Most religions eventually degrade from you and 'God' to you and a leader guy who apparently has a special hotline to 'God'. This creates an unaccountable power position, made worse by the leader being able to pretty much claim whatever nonsense they want all justified through faith. The world is stuffed full of nasty sociopaths who love to control others and these sort of power structures just attract them in droves.
In the end the only thing I think that can defend against this is education and vigorously defending a secular state (BTW I personally believe in Christianity, but not most Christians).
The elected government is a result of the people. Turkey is a mostly functioning democracy and they have voted Erdogan into power twice now (well, he wasn't voted for rpime minister but his party was, and later he was elected presisent despite his actions as prime minister). Now, as someone who used to date a secular liberal Turkish woman (who at the time lived in Turkey) a few years back, trust me, I'm more than aware that not all of Turkey or its people support such policies, but unfortunately at this point it seems that most, even the majority does (although in fairness sake, he won the presidential elections with a very narrow margin, just over 51 % if the votes, so the country was/is split on the middle
Erdogan has gained popularity because he has done some good to the Turkish economy and improved general infrastructure etc. This is all fine and well. Unfortunately the man is also religious bigot and a conservative who's doing his best to slowly dismantle the secular basis which Turkey has maintained ever since Ataturk. There was recently a case of a woman being jailed for having the audacity to stand on a quran. A guy was jailed and is facing charges for (literally) "insulting the president".... Not to mention he handled the riots, the attempted banning of youtube etc etc.... He's an authoritarian through and through when it comes to social issues and rights.
So either the majority of Turks living in their native country do not realize this, do not care about this, or are actively in favor of it (and outside the larger cities there are still large areas were this sort of conservative islamic rhetoric is popular as hell). Either way the populace is not entirely to blame for his actions, but when you have over half the people voting in favor of a guy who has a track record of favoring banning things he does not agree with, well the country is not exactly blameless either.
"It is the business of the future to be dangerous" -Alfred North Whitehead
The interesting thing about Turkey is that there is (was) a more or less common belief / acceptance of in the secular state as founded by Kemal(Atatürk), with the military having a specific charge to defend that secularity if necessary. They have stepped in before when things got a bit too religious, but the ease with which Erdogan has swept aside those military, cultural and constitutional defenses shows how hard it is to actually defend against a popular leader with followers united through faith. It's also a valuable lesson on the fragility of democracy. Erdogan purportedly said: "Democracy is like riding a tram: once you reach your destination, you get off"; now he may not have actually said it, but he is certainly acting it.
If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
Censorship, HA! There's a little thing in polite society known as "tact". While I do feel for your situation to deny your inherent identity, you happened to go to a land where non-heterosexuality is considered a problem. Maybe you feel that Turkey's culture is barbaric but there are times and places to pick your fights, and it's obvious your friend was not prepared to fight for social justice in that instance. The expedient thing in that situation is simply to deny yourself, what you would call censorship. In the rest of the world, social politeness is known as "not making waves".
Oh come on. It's a synecdoche. Are you... not a frequent user of human language?
Obviously the calls for censorship are not coming from the unanimous entirety of the population, nor from Turkey's inanimate infrastructure and buildings, nor from Turkey's actual soil and rocks and trees.
When the news reports that the White House said such-and-such, do you express surprise that a 200 year old edifice has achieved sentience and begun meddling in politics?
Are you sure, it's the COUNTRY that absolutely loves to censor stuff - and not its (elected) government?
If you don't stop your government from doing evil, you are complicit, just like if the brain and heart don't stop the hands from doing evil, you are guilty.
Yes, that implies some dark things about Americans, of which I am one.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Turkey is a basket case. The current leadership is introducing medieval Islam in what was technically a secular country. They have little choice.
On its boarders the region run by the Islamic State death cult who have co-opted the Islamic religion to indoctrinate their cannon fodder. The point about Muslim religious authority is that it belongs to whoever declares that they own it. The point about a religion is that it replaces the moral judgement of individuals with the rules as given by the earthly religious authority.
To cut a long story short if Turkey does not adopt a mediaeval society and reject the west then the people will turn to Islamic State and kick the government out and replace them with the death cult.
Expect Turkey to become hostile to westerners.
Facts are history now plebs have politics for religion on social media.
If you were 'in the parts around Istanbul', that might have made a difference. As is not uncommon generally, or terribly different from arrangements right here at home, your results may vary between some of the more cosmopolitan urban areas and the electorate out in pious hickville.
Pious hickville won the last round at the polls, which is why the current government alternates between highly controversial 'development' projects practically designed to rub the uppity urbanites' noses in it and pandering to reactionary tendencies; but it hardly enjoys a strong mandate in doing this. Unfortunately, you don't actually need a strong mandate, just an electoral majority and a willingness to act like you have a strong mandate.
Indeed, is that why Americans, twice in a row, elected a president who declared two wars on the taxpayer's dime, bankrupted the nation, and destabilized an entire geography - of which, Turkey is right at the border?
elected hahahah.
well, perhaps it was elected. IT CAN'T FUCKING BE UNELECTED though and investigators trying to bring up the corruption are fired.
I guess they found out that minecraft has a chat option.
at least Erdogan is doing everything he possibly can to keep Turkey out of meeting EU requirements.
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Ignoring the personal insult for a moment. Who says no nation willingly accepts regression? Have you looked at Russia and its gangster leader recently?
Facts are history now plebs have politics for religion on social media.
I was with a Turkish friend and he forced me to LIE about my sexual orientation to meet his friends and their families.
Yes, that is rude. He should have allowed you to just not even bring it up at all, which would have been more appropriate in Turkey or any other country.
If you are not allowed to question your government then the government has answered your question.
I suspect to many Muslim youth ISIL looks very little different to the way the left in the Spanish civil war looked to young Europeans last century. Many many Europeans went to fight the dictator Franco and died. Fortunately they did not in the main bring their bombs and guns back with them, we certainly did not put them all in prison as we do returnees from Syria and Iraq.
There is no church hierarchy in Islam that we could expect to make a statement on behalf of the faith, its not so easy to denounce your own religion either. I am not surprised that you think that extremism is tolerated by default in Islam, I think it is more a case of it being difficult to tell by what is pronounced publicly. Also we have to overcome the stunning hypocrisy of Bush and Blair who are personally responsible for lying to the world about weapons of mass destruction then proceeding to start a war in which 153,828 Iraqi civilians have died. This is 51 times more people than died in the Twin Towers. No wonder muslims have concerns about their place in our societies.
Sorry but this is like expecting the Pope to denounce the Westborough hate church. Also remember that the ISIL soldiers in Syria have in fact liberated the country from Bashar al-Assad. The fact that this liberation is into the care of a death cult is something that many will not believe. It would be like the West denouncing a christian militia - say the lords resistance army. I do not recall any church leader excommunicating those men for murder, abduction, mutilation, and child-sex slavery.
The point is that Muslims views are open to persuasion just like westerners. At the moment ISIL is doing a great job of trying to tar Muslims the world over with their greasy death cult and the predictable outraged bigoted red faced old white men are screaming from the rooftops that all Muslims are apologists for terror because young Muslims are being sold a better future by the death cult than the same bigoted red faced old white men.
We need to step up to the plate and offer the youth a better vision than "all Muslims are terrorist sympathizers". If we do not ISIL will succeed in driving a wedge between the west and its Muslim population.
The one guaranteed outcome of us allowing ISIL to do this will be genocide, because they believe that the end times are here and they want it to happen on both sides - and personally I will be blaming the red faced old white men for allowing simple psychology to beat the West if it happens.
Facts are history now plebs have politics for religion on social media.
Looking outside the official explanation, governments are concerned about the use of social gaming as a communications conduit. I believe there have been stories on Slashdot about this. If email is known to be under high surveillance, then the terrorists will seek to communicate in code via Xbox live or Steam.
What regression are you talking about? Compared to Yeltsin even Putin looks good.
"It's such a fine line between stupid and clever" -- David St. Hubbins, Spinal Tap
Perhaps somebody depicted a mohammad?
You do realize that the Westboro BAPTIST church is not Catholic right? Why would the pope have anything to say about them?
Also, every time you talk about Iraq WMD, you sound more and more like an idiot. There was intel about WMD, Saddam had used them to attack the Kurds before, and was threatening Iran again and preventing weapons inspectors from accessing known weapons plants. At the time the intel looked good, and Saddam himself was saying that he had them. This wasn't a convenient lie used to attack Iraq, unless it was Saddam begging us to attack him.
APK likes to ask for responses to the same things over and over. Maybe he just likes the responses?
As the other commenter indicated, the president doesn't declare war. Congress declares war.
So why would you bring Obama up anyways?
Obama after all doubled the national debt, he started many wars (http://www.poynter.org/news/mediawire/272471/fact-checking-the-war-comparisons-between-obama-and-bush/ http://www.cnn.com/2014/09/23/...) though two is kind of limiting it a bit, and was elected twice.
APK likes to ask for responses to the same things over and over. Maybe he just likes the responses?
At the time the intel looked good
Uh, no. Saddam's son, who had been in charge of the program to destroy the WMD, defected to the west, bringing 11 filing cabinets of documentation with him. The US/UK knew very clearly that they had been destroyed, and in fact 10 Downing Street was complaining internally that "the evidence is being fixed" to falsify the reasons to invade. Iraq was allowing the inspectors free rein by then, even allowing them to search his private rooms in the various presidential palaces. The inspectors said that they were "more than ninety percent finished" when the Bush Administration told them they had to leave because the Air Force was going to target their compound.
You do realize that the Westboro BAPTIST church is not Catholic right?
Way to miss the point.
"Think about how stupid the average person is. Now, realise that half of them are dumber than that." - George Carlin
to practice what they preach.
Yes, it's only Turkish men who show their penises on the internet and are rude to women.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
Here in the UK, Blair's main lie about Iraq's WMD was that (even assuming they did exist) they were (a) somehow capable of hitting us and causing mass death and (b) were basically on the verge of being launched by Sadaam Hussein at any minute.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it