Section 14

No Right Turn has the story of Ahmet Turk, co-leader of the Kurdish Democratic Society Party, who has been sent to prison for six months for referring to Kurdistan Workers Party leader Abdullah Öcalan as Mr Öcalan. Apparently “Mr” imples respect and hence Turk was found guilty of “supporting a criminal”.

But don’t think that you can stay out of jail just by disrespecting people out of habit. Oh no. Failing to respect the right people can get you into trouble as well.

Business Week reported yesterday that a Turkish court has ordered YouTube banned after a Greek YouTuber posted a video describing Kemal Atatürk and the Turkish people as homosexuals. Turk Telecom implemented the ban immediately. Boing Boing reports that somehow the ban only affected Internet Explorer users, Firefox could see the site without difficulty.

Boing Boing suggests that Tourism Turkey change their slogan. Perhaps, “Turkey welcomes you - as long as you keep your mouth shut.” They also provide a handy guide to getting round web censorship.

No Right Turn also reminds us that Turkey’s free speech record isn’t that hot in other areas either; for example, it’s illegal to mention the Armenian Genocide. If Turkey ever joins the EU they could have a tricky time working out which holocausts you must deny and which you must never.

UPDATE 10/03/07: The YouTube ban has been lifted.

Hat tips: No Right Turn and Boing Boing.

This entry was posted on Thursday, March 8th, 2007 at 9:19 am and is filed under Third World, Internet, Censorship. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.