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Censorship Your Rights Online

Turkey's New Far-Reaching Censorship Law 52

Posted by timothy from the people-exist-to-serve-the-state dept.
nautical9 writes: "Wired is reporting that Turkey has just passed a law severely limiting freedom of expression. ISP's can be fined astronomical amounts for something as vague as 'airing pessimism.' It also requires new sites to 'apply' to the government for permission to go online. Amazing the lengths some will go to squash anti-government sentiment."
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Turkey's New Far-Reaching Censorship Law More

Turkey's New Far-Reaching Censorship Law

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  • ANKARA, Turkey -- After a 10-hour Turkish parliament session during which a scuffle was averted, a media law severely limiting freedom of expression on the Web passed with no change early Wednesday.

    How come the interesting bits never get expounded upon? I mean, sure, it's a good hook sentence, but there's no other details in the article about it. Shame.
  • a country thats trying to join the EU
    • ...and has long been a member of NATO.

      The situation in Turkey is in some ways similar to that of Iran. It is an Islamic country; 99.8% Muslim according to the CIA World Factbook. There are factions that want an Islamic government, while others want a secular government.

      In a country like that, the secular government is going to have to produce laws that placate those that want to put the religious leaders in power.

      • Re:And this from... (Score:3, Interesting)

        by The G ( 7787 )
        The situation in Turkey is in some ways similar to that of Iran. It is an Islamic country; 99.8% Muslim according to the CIA World Factbook. There are factions that want an Islamic government, while others want a secular government.

        Um, Turkey is notionally a secular country with a secular government. A much better comparison is to Iraq, which also professes secularism in government. Both regularly make crackdowns on muslim anti-secularism groups, and both are accused of having a history of genocide.
        --G

      • Re:And this from... (Score:2, Informative)

        by Anonymous Coward
        In a country like that, the secular government is going to have to produce laws that placate those that want to put the religious leaders in power.

        Nope. Turkey has a history of suppressing the Islamic Fundamentalist Nutbags (IFN) to keep them out of power. This law is probrably aimed against the religious leaders rather than placating them.
        • suppression of Islamic fundamentalists but especially Kurds.
          • And Armenians...
          • ... that turkey has had kurdish heads of parliament and kurdish prime ministers... I don't recall many prominent political figures of jewish origin in germany, for example...
            • ... that turkey has had kurdish heads of parliament and kurdish prime ministers... I don't recall many prominent political figures of jewish origin in germany, for example...

              I get it, you want to say that if Turkey wants to arrange ethnic cleansing it would be with the democratic consent of the suppressed groups.

              Would it matter?

              • huh? (Score:1)

                by mirnav ( 572204 )
                No, you don't seem to "get it". The point was that in a country, you GENERALLY do not get prime ministers and the like from among suppressed groups that have undergone genocide.

                I don't understand what your sentence means (really), but you are right, it probably does not matter.

                Turkey is a country trying to stumble along on the road to a western style democracy. Not only have the poor bastards started rather late, but they also have the additional misfortune of having taken on the religion of the Arabs some centuries ago. I just don't think it is fair to attack this country on the basis of some deportation/killing of their Armenian populace (who really should not have conspired with the Russians) at the time of WWI, the sins of which should be on the late Ottoman Empire and not on Turkey.

                As for the Kurdish problems, granted that the state policy is not only oppressive but also stupid, at the wake of 9/11 you might begin to appreciate how a state might feel compelled to use force in fighting a terrorist organization (a separatist one) whose pyromaniac tendencies have cost upwards of 30,000 lives in the past decade.


  • Amazing the lengths some will go to squash anti-government sentiment."

    Not at all amazing.

    If the "some" happen to be those enjoying the fruits of the current government's existence, they'll go to lengths to keep the status quo.

    It's always been that way, everywhere.

  • Now that Turkey's internet restrictions are official, might I suggest that they contact Cisco [cisco.com] to firewall off their entire nation in order to further guarantee the prohibition of free expression. Maybe something like China's [slashdot.org] firewall.

    While they're at it, maybe they should contact Yahoo [yahoo.com] to help monitor every discussion group in Turkey so those not thinking (expressing) happy thoughts can be re-educated.


    -Turkey

  • Nothing new... (Score:4, Informative)

    by Big Sean O ( 317186 ) on Thursday May 16, 2002 @02:12PM (#3531534)
    I really like Turkey. I speak a little and I've visited twice. I think it's a really cool place to vacation, especially if you're short on cash.

    There's just a couple of things you have to remember about Turkey:

    1) Don't even think of using, buying, holding, or even thinking about illegal drugs (Midnight Express [imdb.com] is a true story).

    2) Turkey is a strongly secular state. Islam is the predominant religion and people are quite religious, but the populace is quite proud of their separation of church and state. They used to arrest people for wearing Fezzes (when we all know that laffing at them would have the same result)

    3) The Founder of Modern Turkey, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk [yeah, I know I'm missing the umlaut], is revered in Turkey. He's like Washington, Lincoln and FDR combined. His face is on all the money; his picture is in most houses and businesses. He established Turkey as a republic after WW I, he secularized the government, he romanized the alphabet (and dramatically improved literacy) and sought to make Turkey a modern western nation. It's a crime to insult him, almost 80 years after his death.

    4) Turkey is fiercely nationalistic. Their oppression of Armenians and Kurds is legendary and their invasion of Cyprus put them at war with fellow NATO ally Greece.

    5) Like a friend of mine in Turkey once said "Turkey believes in a Free Market, but not a Free Press".

    In other words, Turkey's been fighting all types of foreign influence ever since their independence. They've never been particularly keen on civil liberties, but they've been allies to the US forever because (a) their proximity to the Caucasus during the Cold War and (b) their proximity to the Middle East. [They border the former USSR, Iran, Iraq, and Syria].

    A modern country: maybe, a free country: not really, a good place to be an anti-government protestor: no.
    • They've never been particularly keen on civil liberties, but they've been allies to the US forever [...]

      Yeah, well, Turkey was Germany's ally both in WWI and WWII. And Hitler actually got hist inspiration from the Turkish genocide on the Armenians during/after WWI. I can't find the quote right now, but it was something along the lines of "no one will give a sh*t about the Jews because no one gave a sh*t about the Armenians".

      • According to the US State department [state.gov], Turkey was officially neutral during WWII.

        After Hitler invaded Bulgaria and had conquered France, Turkey (probably wisely) decided to remain neutral. In 1941, nobody was going to come to their aid if they joined the Allies.

        Ok, so 'Forever' might be a little strong... How about 'since WWII.

        Also, the Ottoman Empire was the Ally in WWI, not Turkey. The Turkish Republic came into existence because of the weakness of the Ottoman Empire.

        But you are right. The Armenian 'ethnic cleansing' / Genocide perpetrated by the Turks was inspiration for people from Hitler to Milosevic and Saddam.

        =========
      • Turkey did not fight in WWII. They got in at the last minute, on the side of the winners, to benefit from the end results. As for WWI, present day Turkey cannot be held responsible for anything that the Ottoman Empire of the day might have done (including Armenian killings & deportation), any more than modern day Italy and Italians can be held responsible for atrocities (including feeding slaves to lions in theaters) of the Roman Empire.

  • Slashdot's Priorities (Score:3, Insightful)

    by DarkZero ( 516460 ) on Thursday May 16, 2002 @06:08PM (#3533090)
    I know that people prefer to read news that directly affects them, but it just seems ridiculous that the smallest POTENTIAL infringements of free speech in the US or the UK make the front page of Slashdot every day, but astronomical infringements of free speech in smaller countries get tossed into the bin of obscurity that is the Your Rights Online section.

    Couldn't you guys just give these stories a try some time and see if they spark any real discussion? I have a feeling that they would.
    • astronomical infringements of free speech in smaller countries get tossed into the bin of obscurity that is the Your Rights Online section.

      Surprisingly enough, those smaller countries don't represent that large a chunk of /.'s readership. Something that far removed from our world needs to be on a grand scale for us to even hear about it. We casually refer to the Great Firewall of China, even use it to describe the efforts of other fscked up countries. Nobody here really gets infuriated about it, we just point and laugh, say "oh, those sad, silly Chinese" and move on.

      Actions like this (the repression) are all most of us ever hear about far-off places. I've written off vast tracts of the globe as simply irrational. "Yeah, those Turks. At least they're not bombing Kurds today," and move on. It has nothing to do with foreign countries, actually; near the top of my list are California, inside the D.C. Beltway and generally everything else south of the Mason-Dixon line. I have had to go to those places, where cultural and linguistic similarities let me deal relatively easily with their irrationality. I won't have too much of an issue with traveling to western Europe, but the rest of the world? I'll only see it if they behave more irrationally than usual and my unfortunate ass gets deployed there.

      Relatively minor infringements of the rights by my own government, which is literally constituted to protect those rights, are much more important to me. A government that violates its own constitution has no legitimacy. As a citizen who votes, pays taxes and submits to military service (I'm a pacifist- it's weird), abuses by the government infuriate me. Abuses by other governments, which tend to have no contitutional requirements or even cultural traditions of individual rights obviously offend me far less, if at all.

  • Some years ago I lived and worked in Turkey as a windsurfing instructor. Beautiful women and good dope can be had but you have to be very very careful there. The thing is to make sure you have enough money to buy yourself out of jail if you get into trouble.

    This repression on the net thing will not last very long. Turkey has been trying for years to get into the EU and the EU has set some very strict limits as to what it will accept from Turkey in the way of censorship and repression. Turkey will have to drop this law to get into the EU.
  • ... I must say that we're all shocked by this. This law will obviously change very soon. In the meantime, it will not be obeyed. (As expected)
  • I wonder if this new law was caused by Naom Chomsky. He went into turkey and gave a speech about the Kurds and the govt went haywire, and banned all his books. Well Chomsky is all over the net so I guess they took the next step.

    BTW these laws dont have much effect. If you have:

    1. a friend on the outside
    2. use of good encryption
    3. a personal computer that is free of surveilance

    you can escape all internet cencorship schemes. All you do is set up your friend on the outside as a proxy (i am not sure if proxy is the exact tech term) and make sure all communications between him and you are encrypted.

    There are many people that will setup those proxies to help others evade cencorship. I would if i could afford the bandwidth.

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