Turkish Finance Minister Defends Twitter Ban 94
An anonymous reader writes "Turkish Finance Minister Mehmet Simsek has defended his governments ban on Twitter and accused the social networking site of not complying with court orders. Simsek said: 'The Turkish telecommunications watchdog has made a number of statements saying that they have asked Twitter on a number of occasions to remove some content on the back of court orders and Twitter has been refusing to comply. I don’t think any global company, whether it’s a media company, whether it’s an industrial company, it shouldn’t see itself [as being] above the law.'" As a result of the ban, Tor gained over 10,000 new users in Turkey.
Welcom to the group - China, North korea and Iran (Score:5, Informative)
I wasn't sure if Twitter was banned in China and had to look it up. Indeed it is, along with North Korea and Iran. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C... [wikipedia.org]
Controlling the Message (Score:5, Informative)
Coincidentally, the pro-government media just happened to have its cameras pointed at the spot [youtube.com] where a Syrian jet would invade Turkish airspace yesterday and get shot down with a 'satisfying' plume of black smoke.
If somebody has that list of 'steps to totalitarianism' handy, please link it. "Convince the people of an outside threat" is pretty close to the top.
Re:Welcom to the group - China, North korea and Ir (Score:3, Informative)
Twitter is not banned in North Korea. They just ban the entire Internet.
Re:The issue is not about compliance with the law (Score:5, Informative)
The situation in Turkey is not just another free speech banning law, making law maker and enforcers looking ridiculous. Not at all. There is a mindbogglingly huge corruption scandal going on. The prosecutors were removed from the case, police were ordered not to obey court orders, tens of thousands of civil servants have been relocated etc to stop the investigation. The extend and the number are both unbelievable, so I will leave it to look them up yourself (you would never believe an anonymous source on internet talking about 12 digits, would you?)
Now, when it became apparent that the prime minister had no intention to actually let courts do their job, the prosecutors (quite unlawfully) started leaking dozens of voice recordings of their evidence. So far we have learned that Mr. Prime Minister ordering newspapers what not to press, ordering his son to move hundreds of millions of dollars from his house, selling valuable land to his friendly businessmen, using tax law to crush unfriendly businessmen, ordering the police to increase tension during Gezi movement etc. Tomorrow is the big day. It is said that the PM will not be able to keep his post no matter what after the recording posted on 25th of March. The leaked tapes so far has been uncovered PM's behavior so unconstitutional and immoral that I cannot image what could possibly be so much bigger. The expectation is that either PM's ordering assassination of a opposition leader or he having sex with a minor. Whatever it is, it got PM panicked. This is what got actually twitter banned. There is a cover story, but it is so hastily constructed that *the cover story itself is unlawful.* The story is that a court banned twitter on for not complying, a court which is not authorized to do so, and a court which denies doing/trying to do so.
So whatever your ideas on different lands having different customs and laws, this is not the event to discuss them. Twitter ban in Turkey is 100% wrong.
Re:Above the law (Score:5, Informative)
Several countries have attempted to ban YouTube, Twitter, and similar sites. Most end up removing the ban within days. Some remove it within months.
Turkey is one of the countries that maintained a ban longer than most countries, with the YouTube ban lasting about 29 months. Wikipedia says that even with the ban, it was reported as Turkey's 8th most popular web site while DNS blocks were in place and government officials (including the prime minister and president, both the same people in power today) publicly discussed that they continued to use the banned site. Quite a few other web sites are banned as well, yet they still have a strong Turkish user base.
Turkey has a history of banning the interwebz through DNS blocks, and the people know how to get around it easily.