International Herald Tribune, France
March 8 2007
YouTube asking Turkey to restore access to site
It says offending video has been removed
By Thomas Crampton Published: March 8, 2007
PARIS: A ban on YouTube in Turkey has followed a week of what the
media dubbed a "virtual war" of videos between Greeks and Turks on
YouTube and came as governments around the world – including France –
grappled with the freewheeling content now readily posted on the
Internet.
A Turkish court on Wednesday ordered blockage of all access to
YouTube, the popular video-sharing Web site, over a video deemed
insulting to Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, the founder of modern Turkey.
The ban also coincides with a Turkish struggle to prove its human
rights credentials to the European Union.
Separately, activists in France warned that a recent law against
posting video of violent acts would stifle free expression. The
French law, which was intended to criminalize "happy slapping" – acts
of violence committed for posting on the Internet – could also
criminalize the recording of police brutality, activists said.
"I don’t think the French government intended to attack
user-generated content, but that is the effect," said Julien Pain, a
spokesman for the press freedom organization Reporters Without
Borders. "If someone films a policeman wrestling someone to the
ground, that can be considered a criminal act."
In Turkey, the largest Internet provider, Turk Telecom, immediately
complied with the court-ordered ban and cut off access to YouTube.
"We are not in the position of saying that what YouTube did was an
insult, that it was right or wrong," Paul Doany, the chairman of Turk
Telecom, told the state-run Anatolia press agency. "A court decision
was proposed to us, and we are doing what that court decision says."
Visitors to the site in Turkey on Wednesday were greeted with the
message, first in Turkish and then in English: "Access to
site has been suspended in accordance with decision
No. 2007/384 dated 06.03.2007 of Istanbul First Criminal Peace
Court."
YouTube expressed dismay over the move, adding that the offending
video had been removed and that the company was working with the
government to resolve the situation.
"We are disappointed that YouTube has been blocked in Turkey," the
company said in a statement. "While technology can bring great
opportunity and access to information globally, it can also present
new and unique cultural challenges."
A later court ruling said that the service could be restored after
YouTube removed the offending material, Anatolia reported, but it was
not clear when that would be.
The video that prompted the ban in Turkey allegedly said that Ataturk
and the Turkish people were homosexuals, according to news reports.
Insulting Ataturk is a criminal offense in Turkey. In a front-page
newspaper story, Hurriyet said that thousands had written to YouTube
complaining about the video.
For Turkey, the ban will present a further hurdle as concern grows in
Brussels that Ankara is flouting the free-speech norms necessary for
membership in the European Union.
In recent weeks, Turkey has pledged to revise a law that makes
insulting Turkishness a crime. The law – Article 301 of the Turkish
penal code – has resulted in prosecutions against leading Turkish
intellectuals, including the author Orhan Pamuk, a Nobel laureate,
and Hrant Dink, an Armenian-Turkish journalist who was murdered in
January.
But the government has refused to drop Article 301 altogether, while
the law against insulting Ataturk, which has given rise to the
YouTube case, is considered even more sacrosanct.
The European Commission, the executive branch of the EU, has been
particularly concerned about Article 301, which attracted global
criticism last year when Pamuk was put on trial for telling a Swiss
newspaper that more than a million Armenians were massacred by
Ottoman Turks during World War I.
Krisztina Nagy, spokeswoman for the EU expansion commissioner, Olli
Rehn, who is overseeing Turkey’s EU accession process, declined to
comment, saying that the commission was still trying to confirm the
facts surrounding the YouTube case.
But other EU officials said privately that the abrupt decision to
block access to YouTube would give ammunition to those who argue that
the avowed secularism of the Turkish government does not sufficiently
safeguard free speech.
In France, meanwhile, the new law has provisions to protect
professional journalists or those who record violence in order to
turn it over to the authorities, while others remain liable for fines
of as much as 75,000, or nearly $100,000, and five years in prison,
said Pain, the Reporters Without Borders spokesman.
"This law removes protection for citizen-journalists or bloggers who
would want to record the violence if riots start again in the Paris
suburbs," Pain said.
Dan Bilefsky contributed reporting from Brussels and Sebnem Arsu from
Istanbul.