Blogger.com banned in Turkey

Note: Updates are being added towards the end of the post. Please keep checking.

A Turkish court has blocked access to the popular blog hosting service Blogger (Blogger.com and Blogspot.com owned by Google), since Friday, October 24th, 2008. According to BasBasBas.com, a Dutch blogger based in Istanbul, who alerted us to the issue:

It is suspected that the reason for this has something to do with Adnan Oktar, by some considered the leading Muslim advocate for creationism, who has in the past managed to get WordPress, Google Groups, as well as Richard Dawkins’ website.

Turkish Internet users are seeing this message when trying to visit Blogger.com and all blogs hosted on blogspot.com hosting service: “Access to this website has been suspended in accordance with decision no. 2008/2761 of the TR Diyarbakir First Criminal Court of Peace.

blogger-ban-turkey.jpg

Screenshot of the Turkish blockpage. Source: BasBasBas.com

This is the second instance of a popular blogging service being blocked in Turkey. In August 2007, the Turkish Fatih Second Civil Court of First Instance blocked access to the entire wordpress.com domain after alleged libel of Turkish Islamic-creationist, Adnan Oktar, aka Harun Yahya.

Adnan Oktar has been very harmful to the access of Turkish Netizens to the Internet. He has succeeded in getting a variety of major websites banned by court decisions. Next to these two blogging services, Adnan Oktar also filed a complaint against Google Groups, which led to the ban of the website.

Turkey also blocks access to both video-sharing websites, Youtube and Dailymotion over videos deemed insulting to the country’s founding father, Kemal Atatürk.

Slide, the maker of social networking widgets, has also been blocked by a Turkish court for “harboring pictures and articles that are considered to be insulting to Ataturk.”

Update #1 via Cyber-Rights.Org.TR:

It is now being reported by Turk.internet.com that the blocking order is related to an intellectual property infringement. Digitürk is a subscription based digital TV platform in Turkey which owns the right to transmit the live coverage of the Turkish football league games. Digitürk obtained the blocking order through the Diyarbakir court according to the Turk.internet.com news as there were blog entries providing information and links to known websites which transmit pirated transmission of the live football league games.

Update #2 via CyberLaw Blog: CyberLaw Blog reported today (October 28, 2008) that the ban on blogspot.com blogging platform has been lifted by the Diyarbakir First Criminal Court:

It is, however, unclear why the order has been lifted and it seems like the ban is lifted until Digitürk provides to the court further evidence with regards to its claims for football streaming piracy. Therefore, I would not be surprised to see the blocking order and the ban reinstated.

41 comments

  • What’s next? The Internet? Why don’t we simply ban Starbucks for allowing Wifi, which allows internet access, which allows Google search, which allows access to how one would find the latest Turkish blunder?

  • Eu should act!

    EU should ban Turkey!

  • Kim

    I’m an expat in Turkey who just lost my online forum. I shared photos of my kids with family back home. The horror.

    Damn censoring bastards.

  • marty

    Turks shd ban their bloody government for allowing this pathetic war to take place!

  • For those looking for a backdoor access, try tricking the system into thinking you’re not in Turkey…

    see http://unblocked.org/

  • kipouros

    You can also download UltraSurf free. Then you don’t have to deal with any proxy site URLs and popup windows.

  • Patrick in US

    What a disaster of a country. They’d ban thinking if it were possible. No doubt.

  • […] Blogger.com down in Turkey by court order. […]

  • Dear Colleagues

    Your humble writer/ moderator has/had a blog page. There you could read various current articles on Energy issues, news as well as freelance evaluations of our energy markets.
    It was in English in order to receive global intellectual contributions as well as to inform what we do at our end. That is something that we are here to add some more to the world output.

    Once a sudden that server is blocked by Court Order just because of a complaint until upon new verdict to the contrary. It is hard to evaluate the latest situation. Although it is weird to think that you can block the bloggers, it is harder to tell that in this virtual world of internet, there cannot be any restriction. I check my blog regularly through various interfaces and visualize that there is no less hit than before. I hereby present the situation to your esteemed observations and hope to receive your responses. Kind regards

    Haluk Direskeneli
    http//energynewsletterturkey.blogspot.com

  • Update #1 via Cyber-Rights.Org.TR: It is now being reported by Turk.internet.com that the blocking order is related to an intellectual property infringement. Digitürk is a subscription based digital TV platform in Turkey which owns the right to transmit the live coverage of the Turkish football league games. Digitürk obtained the blocking order through the Diyarbakir court according to the Turk.internet.com news as there were blog entries providing information and links to known websites which transmit pirated transmission of the live football league games.

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