TURKEY: AUTHORITIES TO AMEND RESTRICTIVE LAWS AFTER YOUTUBE BLOCKED AGAIN

Reporters Sans Frontieres/ Reporters without Borders
May 13 2008
France

Reporters Without Borders is astonished that access to the
video-sharing website YouTube has been blocked again in Turkey since
5 May as a result of court orders issued by Ankara magistrate courts
on 24 and 30 April. The grounds for blocking the website were not
given in either case.

"We call on the authorities to give the reasons for these orders,"
Reporters Without Borders said. "This is the third time in less than
two months that YouTube has been blocked in Turkey. The authorities
do not need to block an entire website just because of a few videos
they consider ‘shocking.’ Doing this is an abuse, as YouTube is able
to stop the distribution of offending videos in any given country."

Law 5651 on "the organization of online publications and the fight
against crime committed by means of such publications," in effect
since November 2007, enables a prosecutor to get a website banned
within 24 hours if its content is deemed likely to incite suicide,
paedophilia, drug use, obscenity, prostitution or offend the memory
of Ataturk, the Turkish republic’s founder.

"This law opens the door to too many abuses," Reporters Without
Borders said. "Its collateral damage has included the blocking of
entire sites such as YouTube, Indymedia Istanbul and WordPress. We
urge the authorities to amend Law 5621 so that people can express
themselves freely on the Internet again. Turkey has a legislative
arsenal that places too many restrictions on freedom of expression."

The Indymedia Istanbul website () has
been inaccessible within Turkey since 21 March. The site’s staff are
continuing to post articles at another web address and describe the
blockage as just "an attempt at censorship." The authorities "still
have not understood that censorship is technically impossible on
the Internet," they said. WordPress, one of the most popular blog
platforms in the world, was only recently unblocked after being
accessible since August 2007.

Other participative websites are also blocked. The photo-sharing site
Slide has been inaccessible since 25 March as a result of a court’s
decision in Civril (southwest of Ankara) because of "photos and
articles considered insulting to Ataturk." Google Groups, Google’s
discussion site, has been inaccessible since 10 April as a result
of an action brought by religious leader Adnan Oktar claiming he had
been defamed in comments posted on the site.

Kurdish media websites have also been targeted. The website of Gundem,
a daily newspaper, has been inaccessible since 1 April as a result a
decision by a court of assizes in Ankara. The site of the Firat News
Agency (ANF) has been blocked since 11 February. In these two cases,
the grounds are "propaganda" in support of the outlawed Kurdistan
Workers Party (PKK). Neither media was told of the decision or given
a chance to defend itself.

Freedom of expression in Turkey is often limited by criminal code
provisions that punish threats to fundamental national interests
(article 305), inciting hatred, hostility or humiliation (article
216), attacking the memory of Ataturk (Law 5816 of 25 July 1951) or
discouraging the population from doing military service (article 318).

The Turkish parliament amended article 301 of the criminal code on
30 April, replacing "insulting Turkish identity" by "insulting the
Turkish nation." But this still leaves judges a great deal of scope
to convict anyone who publicly raises such sensitive issues as the
Armenian genocide or the Kurdish issue. Most article 301 cases will now
be heard before magistrate courts instead of criminal courts. Orhan
Pamuk, a Nobel prize-winning novelist, and Hrant Dink, a journalist
of Armenian origin who was murdered by ultra-nationalists in Istanbul
in January 2007, were both prosecuted under article 301.

Anti-terrorism Law 3713 also punishes websites that post "the
propaganda of a terrorist organization" or "the press releases of
such organizations."

From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress