WordPress Blocked in Turkey
Time to leave Turkey, as the Turkish state forcefully blocked my website robokow.net as well as all other websites using the blogging-services of wordpress.com. As per Friday the 17th of August access to WordPress has been blocked from computers that access the internet through Turkish Internet Providers.
I can no longer see my own website or browse through any other blog on WordPress. ‘Access to this site has been suspended in accordance with decision no: 2007/195 of T.C. Fatih 2.Civil Court of First Instance’, is the message that now appears instead of the frontpage of WordPress.
Turkey is very infamous for restricting public speech. In Turkey it is a crime to insult “Turkishness” and citizens who do so are persecuted according to Article 301. Likely one blog that is using WordPress has found guilty of this and hence the whole website has been blocked.
Earlier this year the same had happened to You Tube. Only after You Tube removed the particular video, the website was unblocked unblocked again. If this is the case I really hope WordPress will not follow the example of YouTube. This Turkish law is very unjust and these type of actions ought not to be tolerated.
I cannot see my own website, though I am still able to post through Flickr, the website that hosts my photos.
veromilla replied:
So much for freedom of expression… is this really the idea of a country moving forward? how can a person that is proud of being Turkish be ever offended… how does any person proud of being whoever/whatever they are can ever be offended? Bollocks! Censorship is ignorance, it is blindness, it is insecurity, unawareness, lack of knowledge it is… it is… restrictive, it is oppression, limitation in every way…
August 18, 2007 at 11:57 pm. Permalink.
Sirkka replied:
I am very sorry to hear this. Good luck with searching your next destination.
August 19, 2007 at 12:26 pm. Permalink.
Jasper replied:
this sounds horrible. but do you wanne leave the country because this happened?
i guess you knew bevor that turkey doesn´t have he same free expression standards as the netherlands
for example. well, if you don´t wanne live there anymore come back to BCN. I´ll be there.
August 19, 2007 at 6:53 pm. Permalink.
. ..killerkitty.ch » Zensur in der Türkei! replied:
[...] Freund Robin erlebt grad am eigenen Leib Blog die Folgen der [...]
August 20, 2007 at 10:45 am. Permalink.
Sardinia76 replied:
I’m sorry to hear that you are leaving Turkey so early, as you panned already to stay for quite some time there…..
but it’s a good reason to leave, never without FREEDOM….move on, ciao
August 20, 2007 at 11:07 am. Permalink.
ICH habe heute Geburtstag!! | . ..killerkitty.ch ¦ nein, wir waren schon immer so replied:
[...] um es mit den Worten von Robin zu sagen: heute ist meine [...]
August 21, 2007 at 8:53 am. Permalink.
Bekir L. Yildirim replied:
There is more than free speech involved here. A view on the matter from one of the “native” victims: “WordPress banned in Turkey: a case of throwing the baby with the bath-water“
August 22, 2007 at 10:14 am. Permalink.
sunshineforlife replied:
That sounds bad but hopefully you will get back the freedom using wordpress the soonest.
Happy travelling “again”
August 26, 2007 at 6:03 am. Permalink.
robino replied:
In the past week it became clearer why wordpress is blocked (some guy didn’t like what others wrote about him and somehow he got the judge to block all wordpress websites), and also ways how to bypass the block.
http://labnol.blogspot.com/2007/08/how-to-read-wordpresscom-blogs-in.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harun_Yahya#Controversy
August 30, 2007 at 2:34 pm. Permalink.