INTERNET BANS PIT TURKEY AGAINST FREEDOM OF SPEECH
Today’s Zaman
Aug 23 2008
Turkey
There are currently 853 Web sites banned in Turkey, including
video-sharing site YouTube and dailymotion.com, placing Turkey in
the league of countries such as China and Saudi Arabia, famous for
restricting freedom of speech.
Web sites are most often banned on grounds that they insult the founder
of the Turkish Republic, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, contain vulgarity,
enable gambling or promote suicide. Many sites have also been banned
for crimes covered under the Internet Security Law. But a number of
sites are banned for no apparent reason. The latest Web site to be
banned was gundemonline.com, which was blocked by Ankara’s 11th High
Criminal Court without any justification.
Other countries known to frequently ban Web sites include China,
Iran, Armenia, Tunisia, Indonesia, Syria, the United Arab Emirates
and Saudi Arabia.
Sites protest bans
A campaign has been initiated by elmaaltshift.com to protest these
bans. To date 441 Web sites — including some of the most popular sites
in the country, such as online English-Turkish dictionary zargan.com,
sinema.com and forzabesiktas.com — are supporting the campaign.
Earlier this week the sites supporting the campaign "banned" themselves
by putting up front pages that read "Access is denied," in imitation
of what happens when sites are blocked by courts.
Getting around the bans
The bans have increased the popularity of Web sites, such as
ktunnel.com and its rival, vtunnel.com, that allow Turkish users to
access banned sites. According to data from Web information company
alexa.com, ktunnel.com currently ranks 37th on the list of most-visited
sites in Turkey, while vtunnel.com is at the 41st spot.
Data at alexa.com also shows that despite the ongoing ban, YouTube
ranks 17th on the list of popular Web sites in Turkey, showing that
Turkish Internet users still find other ways to access the site.