The popular video website YouTube has been blocked in Turkey once more. Several sources quote complaints against a video that insults Atatürk, founder and first president of the Republic of Turkey, as the reason for the block. On Friday, internet users in Turkey found the website replaced by a notice saying:
“ Access to this web site has been suspended in accordance with decision no: 2008/55 of T.R. Ankara 12th Criminal Court of Peace.
A Turkish court issued a similar order in March last year, after a row between Turkish and Greek users escalated and resulted in insults of Atatürk. Internet service providers such as Türk Telekom (the largest and and formerly state-owned ISP) can use the domain name system to put the ban into effect.
At the moment, it remains unclear which video exactly is to blame. Some media sources say that the video compared Atatürk with a monkey. This led some YouTube users to suspect that a video entitled 'ataturk was a gay and a monkey turkey turkiye turks' led to the block. This video was added on November 7, 2007, and is a series of images with Atatürk's face on monkeys, homosexuals, obese individuals and several pictures of Borat. The uploader of the video, known as gaymal45, has several other videos which mock Prime Minister Erdogan and President Abdullah Gül.
Under article 301 of the Turkish penal code, public denigration of Turkishness, the Republic of Turkey, Atatürk, and other national symbols, is punishable by imprisonment. The article received a lot of attention because it resulted in the prosecution of intellectuals like Literature Nobel Prize Winner Orhan Pamuk and murdered journalist Hrant Dink.
It is also unclear how long the ban would last. The ban in March was lifted after 3 days, when YouTube sent evidence to the Turkish prosecutor that the video had been removed.-Source: By WikiNews
Comment and add to the story without registration, but keep the comments meaningful please. Links are not accepted.
Comments
#1 Keeping a lid on inappropriate behavior on the internet.
A degree of censorship will, it seems, be necessary to remove such malapropisms from the internet. In many countries, Thailand for instance, there are effective bans on inappropriate material from circulating on the internet.
While these bans are important to maintaining decency, it is notable that they are most effective when they are as limited in scope as is possible. It is a psychological principle of punishment: use the least amount of effective force necessary to remove the behavior. In this instance, there is a signature--a code coming from the particular offensive computer (or computers) spreading the inappropriate video. Negotiating with YouTube to disallow that computer's signature (IP Address) to use YouTube may be the simplest way to eliminate these distasteful videos. If this is impossible, it may be advisable for Ankara to check the signature (IP Address) of the offender while they are online, and shut them down one by one.
By creating a controversy over this censorship, Ankara may be accused of throwing the baby of technology out with the bathwater of one idiotic video.
Best of Luck,
Tynan Kelly
#2 Turkish is doin a good job, in my opinion
i belive that turkey has right to ban youtube beecause the situation is a lil bit different than thailand. in turkey it is not a crime to insult president, government or anyone but only ataturk because modern turkey's ideology and system has constructed under ataturk's laws and principles.
So according to turkish law, any type of insulting or criticizing Ataturk's ideology (kemalism) is a danger for the Turkish Democracy and Secularism