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Censorship Facebook Youtube

Youtube and Facebook May Be Banned In Turkey, Again 57

Taco Cowboy writes "Istanbul (dpa) — Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan is considering banning YouTube and Facebook after local elections at the end of this month, according to remarks carried by local media Friday. It may, or may not be related to the criticisms arising from (not-yet verified) leaked recordings of Mr. Erdogan's involvement with corruption. 'We will not let YouTube and Facebook destroy our nation. We will take measures, including closure,' said Erdogan, who has previously made comments against social media sites. YouTube had been banned in the country for two years and was recently unblocked."
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Youtube and Facebook May Be Banned In Turkey, Again

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  • We will not let YouTube and Facebook destroy our nation

    Ha ha ha

    • by skovnymfe ( 1671822 ) on Friday March 07, 2014 @09:33AM (#46427573)

      Weapons of Mass Media you mean.

      And when do these ignorant dumbasses learn that being afraid of mass media just makes them look even more ignorant and backwards?

      • by SpankiMonki ( 3493987 ) on Friday March 07, 2014 @09:43AM (#46427637)

        Weapons of Mass Media you mean.

        And when do these ignorant dumbasses learn that being afraid of mass media just makes them look even more ignorant and backwards?

        I know, right? Don't those Turkish government idiots realize that they can use mass media to distract, polarize and confuse their citizens? What a bunch of maroons.

    • by drinkypoo ( 153816 ) <drink@hyperlogos.org> on Friday March 07, 2014 @09:39AM (#46427603) Homepage Journal

      We will not let YouTube and Facebook destroy our nation

      Ha ha ha

      By "Ha ha ha" do you mean "If your nation can be destroyed by YouTube and Facebook, your nation is fairly described as pathetic?" Because if so, I agree completely.

      • Not at all .. It's really amusing to see some politician make such a fuss about youtube .. and facehook!! .. AFAIK they cant destroy a chicken .. together ..
      • by PolygamousRanchKid ( 1290638 ) on Friday March 07, 2014 @01:16PM (#46429317)

        If you are a political leader and are afraid of Facebook and Youtube, then you are afraid of your own people. In the case of Erdogan, he is just another Muslim Brotherhood goon trying to tighten the screws on society to slowly squeeze Turkey into becoming an Islamic Republic. His first move to achieve this was jailing thousands of officers in the Turkish military, who were schooled in the thoughts of Kemal Atatürk, the "Father of the Turks".

        As a brief description of what Kemal Atatürk was all about, I'll just lift this from Wikipedia:

        His military campaigns led to victory in the Turkish War of Independence. Atatürk then embarked upon a program of political, economic, and cultural reforms, seeking to transform the former Ottoman Empire into a modern, secular, and democratic nation-state. Under his leadership, thousands of new schools were built, primary education was made free and compulsory, and women were given equal civil and political rights, while the burden of taxation on peasants was reduced.[3] The principles of Atatürk's reforms, upon which modern Turkey was established, are referred to as Kemalism.

        Not bad, considering that this was in the late 1920's! He even introduced a new Latin based alphabet, that replaced the old Arabic script! Can you image a political leader today, who would have the balls and the support to just say, "Oh, let's just switch our alphabet."

        The strategy of Muslim Brotherhood cretins, is to get elected claiming to be "moderately Islamic", without showing their true intentions. Then they use the courts to jail any political opposition and then slowly implement restrictions on society to transform it into an Islamic state. With the army now out of his way, there are only a few brave folks left who stage protests. When his corruption was exposed, he thought that he was far enough down the Islamic path that he can just act like a caliph now.

        It would really be a sad loss for humanity, if all those enlightened thoughts of Atatürk get stomped into the ground, and Turkey is forced into the shackles of Islam in their place.

        • by Anonymous Coward

          A good deal of blame for the re-islamization of Turkey falls on Europe. It was they who insisted that the army loosens its grip on power, forgetting that in Turkey, the army plays a very different role than it otherwise does. Whereas in Eastern Europe, the traditional role of the army was to suppress anti-Communist thought, in Turkey, the army had a role of enforcing Kemalism and seeing to it that Islam, which was a part of the reason for the downfall of the Ottoman empire, didn't make a comeback into Tur

        • by seyyah ( 986027 )

          I'm afraid you've drunk the Atatürk kool-aid. It wasn't pretty. There was no equality in the Turkish republic (look at the Kurds, Greeks, Armenians, Jews and yes, even the women). It wasn't a democracy. And changing the alphabet just meant that future generations were condemned to a life without any concept of their history, the good or the bad. The republic was founded on the principle of deportations, massacres and forced assimilation.

          It would really be a sad loss for humanity, if all those enlightened thoughts of Atatürk get stomped into the ground, and Turkey is forced into the shackles of Islam in their place.

          It'd be a boon to humanity if the thoughts of AtatÃ

      • By "Ha ha ha" do you mean "If your nation can be destroyed by YouTube and Facebook, your nation is fairly described as pathetic?" Because if so, I agree completely.

        It is not the technology of streaming video and pictures on the internet that they fear so much as what they bear: Ideas. Ideas are the pebble that begin the avalanche of action. The has brought change to many nations, including some that no longer exist, for good or ill.

  • And does not know goes against Iceberg.

  • Not.

    Mind you - given the EU machinery in brussels is operated partially by an unelected commision perhaps the turkish governments undemocratic and authoritarian approach is smarter than it first appears.

    • Indirectly elected != unelected.

      Technically, the president of the United States isn't elected either, he's chosen by a bunch of people chosen to elect him.

  • News says Turkish President may well just tell Prime Erdogan to go f*ck himself. Parliament would probably too. That's what I'd hope for anyway.

  • by barlevg ( 2111272 ) on Friday March 07, 2014 @09:47AM (#46427669)

    How will residents of Turkey's largest city learn of their home's rich history?

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vsQrKZcYtqg [youtube.com]

    Or, if you prefer the classic version... [youtube.com]

  • Show 'em 'oooze da boz.

  • by snookiex ( 1814614 ) on Friday March 07, 2014 @09:52AM (#46427691) Homepage

    I hope Turkish FB and YT users use this time to read a book.

  • by lfourrier ( 209630 ) on Friday March 07, 2014 @10:05AM (#46427777)
    Turkish productivity up 15 % in a few weeks
  • ... the productivity in Turkey went up by 237%

  • And build their own great wall. Cisco, IBM, and a host of other companies would be more than happy to help.

  • I love youtube, so that part makes me sad. But Facebook needs to be banned everywhere, period. There was a time when America's Titans of Industry were people like John D Rockefeller, Henry Ford, Andrew Carnegie - people who changed the world with things that sheltered us, improved transportation, and fed and powered the nation. Now our magnates are people who help us post selfies and sell its users as a statistic in advertising. Pathetic.
  • YouTube streaming quality is terrible, and has created a world where no one thinks they need to host their own media servers ever. Facebook reduces all conversation to banality and creates dangerous delusions in its users. If only these were the reasons the Turks banned these sites.
    • I agree. YT streaming kinda sucks . But there's some content there (documentaries and old shows ) which are hard to find anywhere .Even on torrent .
      Try youtube-dl .

      __________________________
      /. is my facebook .i.e. I aint got life i.e. I gots brain
  • I'm not a fan of Facebook by any stretch of the imagination. (I still refuse to open an account despite many people I know being on there.) However, if your entire nation can be "destroyed" by Facebook, then perhaps your nation isn't as stable as you think it is and maybe there are deeper issues than people sharing selfies so their friends can "like" them.

  • Mr. Erdogan is a bad loser. Banning social media is just a childish gut reaction to a non-issue if you ask me. If he had just ignored it people would probably have forgotten about it already.

    • by tqk ( 413719 )

      If he had just ignored it people would probably have forgotten about it already.

      Ah, geez man! You gave away the secret! Why're you helping Erdogan?!? Why do you hate the Turkish people?!?

  • If a country can be destroyed by exposure to videos and social media, it's a pretty damn weak, fragile place.

    That's probably not what he wants as the subtext, but there it is.

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