Mideast Youth - Thinking Ahead

ATTN: Petition to unblock WordPress in Turkey!

August 21st, 2007Esra'a (Bahrain)

The Turkish government has blocked WordPress, a blog publishing system, in all of Turkey because of a private defamation case. Because this censorship silences the voices of thousands of Turkish bloggers, we are petitioning for their rights to free speech.

Banning WordPress is a clear violation of free speech that effects the citizens of Turkey, WordPress bloggers, and readers all over the world. Certainly these disputes can be handled more judiciously by the Turkish courts.

We, the undersigned, respectfully ask the Turkish authorities to reconsider the decision to block WordPress.

PLEASE SIGN THE PETITION!


Click and add this banner on the sidebar of your blog. Support free speech in Turkey.

Activism, Announcements, Awareness, Censorship, Civil Rights, Freedom of Speech, Turkey
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16 Responses to “ATTN: Petition to unblock WordPress in Turkey!”

  1. #1 Marten (Syria/Germany) - August 21st, 2007 at 11:22 am

    Aren’t they “only” blocking wordpress.com and not wordpress.org? Then you should correct the link in the petition.

    To shut down a whole site because of a defamation case is a joke, a sad one. But if wordpress.com is hosting a blog on their site, as a subdomain, they are also responsible for the content (in many law systems). For example in Germany the owner of a forum is responsible by law if one user gets defamed by another user (and the owner doesn’t act). I don’t know the ruling in Turkey, but this might be similar.

    Nevertheless I will sign this petition and hope that wordpress.com will be unblocked.

    so long,
    Marten

  2. #2 Esra'a - August 21st, 2007 at 12:19 pm

    Thanks, we added some things: .com instead of .org, as well as a French translation.

  3. #3 Drima - August 21st, 2007 at 5:56 pm

    Is it just me or is the “sign it” button not working?

  4. #4 Esra'a - August 21st, 2007 at 6:03 pm

    Did you enter the spam code? It seems to be working fine for others.

  5. #5 gary - August 21st, 2007 at 7:54 pm

    Esra, I certainly support your position here, but you recently said:

    “We should aim to educate the people on how to handle certain values, especially free speech, before giving them the right to collectively lead our future.”

    Could this be a case as you say where the speakers need to be educated first?

    “You don’t put that kind of power [free speech] in people’s hand before you calculate and really think about the reactions.”

    Maybe the Turkish government is concerned about the reactions of these blogs.

    gary

  6. #6 kyla - August 21st, 2007 at 10:03 pm

    I can definitely put up a link under my own banner for the petition. I’m making these images for people to use as they please, so I’d rather just provide the resources and have people put them together as they like. Does that sound fair enough? If not, shoot me an email and we’ll talk more. I’m not married to this idea or anything.

  7. #7 Esra'a - August 21st, 2007 at 10:06 pm

    Thanks a lot Kyla, what happens usually is that people don’t know about existing petitions, and thus we end up having like 10 of them. We waited for about a day and no petitions took place, so we took immediate action. We fear that as usual, 10 other petitions might take place without being aware of each other’s existences. We are doing our best in spreading the word, we will appreciate any efforts from your parts too. As you know we already link to your buttons via the petition; it would make more sense to continue linking all of these actions instead of isolating them. Hence my idea of attaching our petition to your banner activities.

    Does this make any sense?

  8. #8 Drima - August 21st, 2007 at 10:16 pm

    Gary, they could have blocked the concerned individual blogs rather than blocking ALL of Word Press. That’s very excessive.

  9. #9 Petition to Unblock Wordpress in Turkey — Geography, Telecast - August 22nd, 2007 at 2:25 am

    [...] Youth has set up an online petition to unblock Wordpress in Turkey. Please take a moment to read and sign [...]

  10. #10 Petition to Unblock Wordpress in Turkey : Don’t Block the Blog - August 22nd, 2007 at 2:35 am

    [...] Youth has set up an online petition to unblock Wordpress in Turkey. Please take a moment to read and sign [...]

  11. #11 gary - August 22nd, 2007 at 5:26 am

    Drima, I think you missed my point. Personally I don’t believe governments should have the right to censor anyone, period. Putting any restrictions in place is always a slippery slope.

    gary

  12. #12 gary - August 22nd, 2007 at 6:35 am

    Drima, I apologize for my previous remark. I was actually carrying over a discussion on free speech with Esra from another article, so it was easy to read out of context. I wasn’t considering this when I posted my initial reply to you.

    gary

  13. #13 Against Turkish wordpress blogs’ censorship at La bottega di kit - August 23rd, 2007 at 7:33 am

    [...] per la libertà di pensiero. L’epoca della censura di stato è finita da mò. Firmate la petizione e passate parola. Facciamoci [...]

  14. #14 support bloggers’ right and free speech « shongjog - August 26th, 2007 at 8:09 am

    [...] Banning WordPress is a clear violation of free speech that effects the citizens of Turkey, WordPress bloggers, and readers all over the world. Certainly these disputes can be handled more judiciously by the Turkish courts. (excerpt from the site) http://www.mideastyouth.com/2007/08/21/attn-petition-to-unblock-wordpress-in-turkey/ [...]

  15. #15 Murat - October 9th, 2007 at 4:34 am

    Lutfen

  16. #16 Andy - December 19th, 2007 at 10:03 am

    Oh, and did not know about it. Thanks for the information …

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