Turkey Plans Internet Filtering

By ⋅ May 16, 2011 ⋅ Post a comment
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By Matthew Brunwasser

(Photo: Matthew Brunwasser)

Thousands of protestors marched down Istikal Cadesi, Istanbul’s main pedestrian street. They chanted and waved signs. One poster put a Turkish twist on Barack Obama’s campaign slogan. It read “Yes we ban.”

The protestors were demanding that the Turkish government take its hands off the Internet.

The demonstrators considered the proposed new filters as just the latest step to tighten the government’s control over the Internet. Turkish officials say the filters are not about censorship. They are meant to protect children and families from harmful content on the Internet. But protestor Melike Ozbek says the authorities can’t be trusted.

“The thing is that people do not know,” said Ozbek. “That’s the problem with the government; they are lying all the time, to their own voters, to their own people. They are lying all the time. It’s a lie that they are not censoring. This is to show people they are being fooled, to be able to create some sort of spark in their head, to check what’s going on so that maybe then they will understand.”

Not all of the protestors were Internet savvy youngsters. Gul Albay, 56, said this was her first protest in more than 30 years. She only uses the Internet for work but feels the filters proposal is scary.


“This is really very very bad, it’s really a big damage for freedom because the Internet is so big and so deep,” Albay said.

Choosing a Filter

The new regulations are set to come into force on August 22. Users will have to choose one of four filters. One is called the family filter and another is for children. The domestic filter blocks all foreign sites. And the standard package will be the default. Yaman Akdeniz, a law professor at Bilgi University, worries that Turkish authorities will use these filters to step up control of the Internet.

“They are not telling us whether there will be monitoring of everyone’s habits and usage, since everyone will have a user name and password under this system,” said Azdeniz.

The head of the telecommunications regulatory agency, Tayfun Acarer appeared on television and denied that any filters would be mandatory. He said that the measures are meant only to enforce Turkish law.

“Turkey is more transparent than many other countries regarding this issue,” Acarer said. “I want to emphasize this. When you go to a banned site in a European country, you see only a flag or a stop sign. But if a web site is blocked in Turkey, it is always clearly stated when, why and by which institution the page was banned.

Eksi Sozluk

Turkey has closed thousands of websites. One was Eksi Sozluk, or Sour Dictionary, one of Turkey’s first, biggest and freest online communities.

The founder of Eksi Sozluk, Sedat Kapanoglu, says the authorities shut down the site because one user said he liked marijuana.

“They closed the whole website because of one single entry under single topic,” said Kapanoglu. “The ban took two months. We didn’t know about the ban actually because we thought it was a technical problem.”

Kapanoglu said his website has two software developers and five lawyers. He’s bracing for the financial impact of the filters.

“Eksi Sozluk contains adult content, so I don’t think we will make it to family packet or children’s packet,” Kapanoglu said. “I don’t think that will happen. It will impact our revenue as well.”

A non-profit press freedom group has filed a lawsuit. It’s seeking an injunction against the filters, based on administrative and constitutional violations. A court decision is expected by the end of June.

Discussion

6 comments for “Turkey Plans Internet Filtering”

  • http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100000513969811 William Ashley

    I lived in Istanbul for 14 months and I know this is the beginning of the end of democracy in Turkey….The Turkish govt is playing on the gullability and ignorance of the Turkish people.   The Turkish need to rise up against this fascism as did those in Egypt, Tunisia, Bahrain and elsewhere around the Middle Easy.  The Turkish govt wants to strong arm the  public to inititate Shariya Law.

    • http://www.facebook.com/people/Çağatay-Toprak/735560793 Çağatay Toprak

      You are right, they are destroying our democracy day by day.

      Thousands of web site is blocked without any prompt. Acarer’s team threatening ISS companies by closing them, to ban web sites without a court decision. Lots of websites blocked via this illegal way.

      The legal way is worse. Once they found an illegal content on a website, they prefer to block whole site. Sometimes they don’t prompt to public about it. And admins of website doesn’t know what is the illegal content in their website.

      After August 22th, they will keep as secret the list of banned websites. They will force people to select a filter option and standart option (by default for who won’t chose others) is also a filter too. By-passing the filters with DNS, proxy or tunnels will became illegal, and ISS companies will be responsible to detect users who by-passing filters.
      If they are protecting children from harmful content over internet, why by-passing the filters are becoming illegal ? Do children are going to use proxies ? Or they are going to punish children who doing this ?

      Government already keeping opponent penmen in jail without any acceptable reason. They are censoring books and TV’s by someway. How can we trust them, they are going to watch opponents over internet or not ?

      We are planning to shutdown our internet connection to suppress ISS companies to make them forcing government to cancel censor rules.

  • http://twitter.com/OMagill Omer Magill

    Personally I feel as though many things in Turkey are exaggerated, whether its involving politics or not. Many actions the current Turkish government is taking are criticized without giving a thought about it. I myself know many Turkish people, I am part Turkish and I have lived in Izmir for a very long time, I also have been all around Turkey so I am familiar with the culture and the social mentality.
    I am against the Internet filtering by all means, although in this article I don’t believe it is reflecting the truth as it should be. For example, the quotations by the protester, Melike Ozbek, it sounds like she is rather not approaching to the subject objectively. There are three main political parties in Turkey, they are AKP with is the current government, CHP and MHP. They are all against each other in any matter at hand. 
    People tend to ignore the fact that since AKP, the government has improved and took more action in a lot of fields whether international or internal. But whenever an error or a mistake occurred in the system, people criticized them in an unproductive manner. Although by people, I do NOT mean the general public, I mean certain people who are opposing AKP. If AKP was widely opposed in Turkey then how come they were elected twice in a row? 
    I personally do not support AKP but I look at things objectively and from what I see, AKP has done a great job and this fact can not be neglected! 
    About this article, I support the cause although I do not want to get involved in it due to these “certain” people who ignore the facts ignorantly. But I feel like I should explain myself.
    Also @facebook-100000513969811:disqus , I believe you are wrong. I believe you should reconsider your statements and the Turkish Government, also the Turkish public too. You referred to the public as ignorants, although I beg to differ. 

    • http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100000247546136 Alex Zahr

       Dude your link is filtered too!!

      • http://twitter.com/OMagill Omer Magill

        I figured why, when you click on the link the ” ‘ ” appears in end of it, which shouldn’t be there so I’ve fixed it now and it should work.

  • http://twitter.com/tekerirem irem teker

     Shame on you those who vote for chp and spread this internet censorship shit! Chp was the one who banned “calling to the prayer” in arabic, they had prevented the kurdish from speaking their mother tongue. Many people just exaggarate this because they want government to lose votes. They are too blind to see what kind of beautiful improvements have taken place in Turkey. Can you even compare the Turkey of 2001 and today’s Turkey? You cannot and you are jealous just because we have a conservative government. Shame on you people, you never try to make useful suggessions and improve our country when the case includes akp.