Turkey tired of Internet bans, mass punishment of users

Banning all the blogs is like throwing a package of rice into a garbage can because you think sorting it is difficult,” wrote one of Turkey’s millions of bloggers on her blog, which she wants to remain anonymous.

The blogger’s reaction came in the wake of a recent court ban that has blocked Google’s famous blog-hosting service, blogspot.com/blogger.com, following complaints by digital satellite platform Digiturk.

A Diyarbakır court last week issued an order to block blogspot.com after Digiturk filed a complaint against the website on the grounds that it violated the company’s broadcasting rights to Turkey’s top football division. The court decision, which was not the first website ban in Turkey, has led to great disappointment among civil society organizations along with bloggers who interpreted the move as a blow to human rights and a stain on Turkey’s image.

Internet Technology Association (İTD) President Mustafa Akgül said the ban imposed on blogspot.com was a violation of human rights and freedom of expression in particular, and it places Turkey in a difficult situation in the international arena. Akgül accused the courts of taking the easy way by imposing a ban on blogspot.com instead of finding the individuals who violated Digiturk’s broadcasting rights. He said those who commit an offense on the Internet should be punished individually and giving a mass punishment to all bloggers is an unfair thing to do. “Court should act fairly. While they want to punish several people for their illegitimate actions on the Internet, they should not also punish millions of innocent Internet users because justice does not call for punishment of the innocent while making the balance between the crime and the punishment proportional,” he told Sunday’s Zaman.

In the wake of the court ban, many people have launched protests on social networks such as Twitter and Facebook against the ban imposed on blogspot.com. Thousands of people became members of the “Don’t Touch My Blog” page opened on Facebook.

People are calling for everyone to condemn Internet bans, boycott Digiturk and change DNS settings as well as opposing the current Internet law that makes such bans possible.

A statement released by bloggers at blogumadokunma.tumblr.com said: “Digiturk, Google and the Republic of Turkey should be sensitive about the censoring shame from now on, all the anti-censor Internet users should support this movement, and all members of the press should lend their support to freedom of expression.” Tansel Parlak, an activist from the Young Civilians, a nongovernmental organization famous for its use of sarcasm in its protests, said the bans imposed on the Internet in Turkey have gone beyond being tragic-comic and become stupid. “It is like cutting all the trees in a forest when you just need a few of them,” he said.

Parlak also criticized Digiturk for triggering such a ban and taking a side against bloggers -- the majority of whom are the company’s subscribers. He said the company’s move has prompted many Digiturk subscribers to boycott the company due to the bans imposed on their blogs, which goes against the company’s interests in the end. Parlak suggested loopholes in the current legislation that make such bans possible should be eliminated, and legal amendments should immediately be made to prevent further bans on the Internet. A columnist from the Radikal daily, Cüneyt Özdemir, who discussed the ban on the blogs in his column in the daily on March 2, made a radical proposal to Transportation Minister Binali Yıldırım.

“I told him not to deal with opening and closing websites one after the other. They should just cut off the entire Internet connection and that will be it. Everything will be fine then. It seems impossible for us to achieve anything by debating these insensible bans one by one,” wrote Özdemir in his column with sarcasm.

Turkey’s Telecommunications Directorate has blocked more than 1,000 websites since last year under the law against cyber crime, which includes offenses such as insulting the memory of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, the founder of the Turkish Republic. Websites are most often banned on the grounds that they insult Atatürk, contain vulgarity, enable gambling or promote suicide. Many sites have also been banned for crimes covered under the Internet Security Law. But a number of sites have been banned for no apparent reason. The Internet restrictions in Turkey are a subject criticized by the EU. “There are frequent website bans which are disproportionate in scope and duration,” according to the latest EU progress report, which was issued last November, noting “Law No. 5651 … limits freedom of expression and restricts citizens’ rights to access information.”