CyberLaw Blog

Archive for August 27th, 2008

This is to confirm that YouTube is still blocked in Turkey as of 15:23 GMT on 27.08.2008. As I suspected local and worldwide news reports are wrong to report that a court order banning access to YouTube has been lifted. A dubious press release by the Telecommunications Authority (only in Turkish) confirmed this today as well as an interview with the head of the Telecommunications Communication Agency (only in Turkish).

I am not sure why no one bothered to check whether access to YouTube is available from within Turkey or not. As can be seen below access is still denied and the order of Ankara First Criminal Court of Peace dated 05/05/2008 of 2008/402 remains.

What I can confirm is that as of 18 August 853 websites are blocked in Turkey. 241 of these are blocked by Court orders and 612 by administrative blocking orders issued by the Telecommunications Communication Agency. All the administrative orders are to do with the new Internet Law No. 5651 and with regards to the catalogue crimes listed in article 8.

I continue to monitor the YouTube saga in Turkey and despite these reports YouTube is still blocked in Turkey (as of 27.08.2008 13:14 GMT) and I wonder why the reporters who prepare these news items don’t check whether the site is accessible or not before announcing that YouTube can be accessed in Turkey. In any case YouTube won’t stay accessible for long and I am confident that several other court orders to block access to Youtube are imminent (Yaman Akdeniz).

Ban on YouTube removed, updates continue – Turkish Daily News Aug 26, 2008: “Ban on YouTube removed, updates continue
Tuesday, August 26, 2008

ISTANBUL – Turkish Daily News

The ban on the popular video-sharing Web site YouTube has been removed, CNN-Türk television reported yesterday.

Access to the Web site is expected to be restored today after the necessary updates are completed. Access to YouTube has been blocked since May 5 upon the order of an Ankara magistrate, who ruled it was host to videos insulting Atatürk, the founder of the Republic. However, 1.5 million people still visit the site daily despite the blockings as it is possible to access the videos by changing proxy settings.

The blocking of YouTube, which has now happened three times, has become a symbol of the censorship issue in Turkey, where reportedly 853 Web sites are blocked. In fact, the issue reached a point where last week a protest campaign was initiated by several Turkish bloggers and Web site owners. More than 400 Web sites and blogs have blocked themselves temporarily in protest of the censorship.

It is unclear whether or not the protest had any bearing on the decision to reopen the site. It is, however, certain that the censorship debate will continue, as many other Web sites and blogs remain blocked, and the law governing the Internet, Article 5651 of the Penal Code, continues to be criticized both by Internet users and information experts. “