YouTube blocked in Turkey (take #2)
September 18th, 2007For the second time now, “a Turkish court ordered telecom authorities Tuesday to block access to the popular video-sharing website YouTube over videos that allegedly insulted the country’s leaders,” according to the AFP news service which broke the story about an hour ago.
Censorship in Turkey remains to be on the rise, this is definitely not good news to follow Turkey’s ban of WordPress, for which we have a petition for here.
How was the ban uplifted the first time around in early March? Contrary to popular belief, it wasn’t due to public protests or outrage. It was due to YouTube giving into censorship, by bending over to the Turkish authorities:
YouTube has removed all of the offending videos that led a Turkish court to order that YouTube be banned from the country earlier this week, and the ban has been lifted.
More at TechCrunch.
But look, guys! YouTube is trying to be taken seriously:
YouTube said in a written statement, carried by Anatolia, that it was ready to cooperate with Turkish authorities to resolve the dispute.
Cooperate? More like, get threatened into self-censorship.
We can only expect YouTube to make the same mistake it did earlier, aiding the unacceptable curbing of free speech in Turkey. It’s not like they didn’t do it with Thailand. Thank God the developers of WordPress actually have values and standards by not removing the content and blogs that resulted in the ban of their website. Let’s just hope they keep it up.
I don’t know about you guys, but I’m really tempted to just boycott YouTube, for it favors business over free speech and it’s clearly not here to serve the interests of those in restricted societies. So much for media ethics.
Edited:
I just come across this article on BoingBoing, claiming that YouTube did not and never gave into censorship as the videos in question were immediately removed by the users themselves. Which I am still not sure of. What the article quoted says is:
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.
And what YouTube claims is:
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.
So if it wasn’t removed by the user, YouTube was going to remove it anyways?
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[...] blocked the Google-owned video-sharing site YouTube again, according to Agence France Presse (via MEY). The decision followed a complaint by a resident in the eastern city of Sivas that the site hosted [...]
Stop bashing Turkey. YT is banned in many EU cuntries time to time. this is not cencorship but simply implimentation of law.
I despite Turk haters !
funny that somebody from Bahrain who is a female and not allowed to vote due to her gender dares to criticise Turkey where woman got right to vote over 7 decades ago?
Turk haters? Dude, this is about censorship. We hate the game, not the playa’.
Secondly, I’m sorry to burst your bubble of sheer ignorance, but not only are women in Bahrain allowed to vote, we enable female candidates to run for parliament as well. We currently have 2 female ministers in the cabinet. So before you irrelevantly bash my country in such a nationalistic manner, learn your facts. I don’t take offense to people criticizing my country if it was actually mistaken. I wouldn’t dare to ever deny it.
PS – If such a ban took place in Bahrain, we would’ve raised hell. Because we actually care for our country and our rights within it, unlike you.
Oh yeah? Care to tell us where, when, and for what purpose? With links to factual articles, please.
At least women there get to choose what they wear. Women’s rights is not exactly exemplified by banning the hejab; though this is what happened in Turkey. Women get fired from their teaching jobs if they choose to wear the Muslim headscarf. Why competitively brag about your country when it’s so far from perfect, and why insult others in the process of doing so? If you don’t want others to criticize your country then you should probably focus on fixing in instead of being in denial.
Ah, Murad. The voice of reason <3
History shows that people denied the freedom to communicate openly will find other ways, even at the risk of being caught and punished.
Are there underground webistes on the the Net that are proxies for reaching banned sites, or people who can get to the content reposting it where it can be reached if you know where to look?
Imagine if Bahrain banned youtube – there’d be articles all over the place saying how it was backsliding, and how this summoned the death knell of reform etc, whereas Turkey does something like this and there’s virtual media silence. You can understand the US media establishment not wanting to criticise Turkey, what with its cooperation in Israel’s bombing of Syria last week. Western liberals on the other hand wants to promote Turkey as a model Islamist democracy, so you its hardly surprising we haven’t heard much about this incident from them either.
Still, its sad to see blog commentators defending this stupidity. At least in Bahrain you’d find that if the government did something like this bloggers would be slagging it off, not trying to defend it with absurd arguments.
I am surfing the web now cruising for a reaction. Why aren’t there any? When Morocco banned YouTube, petitions and campaign sites as well as blogger solidarity took over the MENA blogosphere. When Turkey banned wordpress, only slightly over 100+ signed the MEY petition about it?
Wow, wake up Turkey, and show us some activism!!
[...] to be rapidly increasing in Turkey as YouTube was blocked for the second time yesterday, reports MidEast Youth, just six months after a similar move by the Turkish courts. Back in March of this year, it was due [...]
MyTwoCents:
“History shows that people denied the freedom to communicate openly will find other ways, even at the risk of being caught and punished.”
I dont think so, look at the dark ages and other periods on mankind, you can also look at totalitarian states dictatorships etc. if people are afraid they do not even speak a word my friend, if they are adequately intimidated they chicken out, you might hear a voice or two but those might also be silenced
so don’t count on it much
YouTube is not blocked for now.
Hello, John,
Totalitarian states is exactly what I was thinking of. There were underground newspapers, banned books being circulated, illegal radios, etc. in Nazi Germany, the USSR, and many (maybe all) others.
[...] gives in to censorship (again!) Author: Esra’a (Bahrain) – November 27, 2007 A few weeks ago, we posted about Turkey’s incident with YouTube, and how YouTube was giving in to state-sponsored [...]
[...] TO BE rapidly increasing in Turkey as YouTube was blocked for the second time yesterday, reports MidEast Youth, just six months after a similar move by the Turkish courts. Back in March of this year, it was due [...]