Logon to MilliMotor.com (roughly translated as the national engine) and what you’ll find is a simple webpage with a design similar to that of the Google.com homepage: a mostly white background organized more or less around a box in which to enter your search query. The devil is in the details, though -- on this site, instead of “Google Search” and “I’m Feeling Lucky” options, what appear beneath the search field are buttons that read “Search” and “I’m Feeling Clever, Nimble and Well-Mannered” -- clicking the latter will open up a link to the online home of the Atatürkist Thought Association (ADD), a neo-nationalist organization that was at one point active in trying to get the Turkish government to block access to Google over content the ADD deemed insulting to Atatürk, the founder of modern Turkey, and the concept of Turkishness.On MilliMotor, search results are listed in a page where the left frame contains a “statement” that begins: “Today is a historic day. For today, our Turkey is now, in the information age, a country that does not import but rather produces information.”
A dummy link on the bottom of the screen promises details about “words for which a search cannot even be suggested,” and a working link to “Conditions of Use” -- which opens up in a new page and include principles such as “The word you are searching for cannot contradict the indivisible wholeness of the state’s country and people” and “The person or institution you are searching for must not be engaged in activity that contradicts Atatürk’s principles and revolutions.”
The site pokes fun -- but seriously -- at recent efforts by some state institutions to block Internet content that have resulted in an on-again, off-again ban on popular video sharing website YouTube.com for about the past two years, as well as Internet accessibility issues that affect the performance of a number of services connected to Google. Controversy over the bans flared up recently when Internet users across Turkey began experiencing difficulty connecting not just to YouTube, but to applications like Gmail and others bearing Google.com IP addresses. Turkish communications authorities responsible for the bans have remained firm despite domestic and international criticism -- including from President Abdullah Gül -- of its bans on YouTube and other sites, maintaining that even giant firms like Google must adhere to Turkish regulations to the letter.
MilliMotor.com founder computer engineer Ahmet Turan Han (29) told Today’s Zaman that he started the site on June 11 in a bid to protest the Telecommunications Directorate (TİB) restricting free access to the Internet in Turkey. “There is no innocence in the directorate’s moves, which it takes without even obtaining court orders. Third parties upload videos to the Internet from abroad but the ban is instated against the Turkish public. This ban must be lifted immediately,” he says. Noting that in the past the TİB had only blocked off certain DNS settings, Han decried the directorate’s recent move to block IP addresses directly, speculating that it had done so in a move to blackmail Google into paying certain taxes.
“YouTube.com and Google are closed on allegations of insults to Atatürk -- there are other ways to get rid of those four videos. When you block access, you’re punishing your own country. Those who are abroad can access everything,” he noted. Han is also a member of the Young Civilians, an NGO known for its trademark satirical comments. Searches for keywords in modern Turkish political controversy yield poignant results on MilliMotor.com. Users querying phrases such as “Ermeni soykırımı” (the Armenian genocide) are met with the output “Did you mean: the so-called Armenian genocide”? A search for “Kurd” ends similarly: “Did you mean: Turk?” Han is still working on adding features to his site.
And so it remains unclear exactly when Turkey will find a sustainable solution to its Internet woes, though we may have a clue: One click on the “MilliTube” link on the MilliMotor site’s upper left-hand corner, and the user is redirected to a screen entirely blank save for one notice, which reads, “We’re watching videos one by one, when one of them is approved we’ll relay that information.”
