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2015 Internet Report on Turkey released
The Alternative Informatics Association released its yearly report about the Internet in Turkey. Entitled “State of the Art Report of the Internet in Turkey – 2015,” the report is dedicated to the memory of Özgür Uçkan, who passed away in 2015. He was a founding member of the AIA and a devoted defender of rights […]
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Academics under attack in Turkey
1128 academics from Turkish universities signed an open letter urging the government to stop using curfews to facilitate the violence ongoing for weeks in Kurdish towns. The number of local signatories increased to 2212 by 20 January 2016, including 30 Nobel Prize winners. Moreover, the letter heading “We Will Not Be A Party To This […]
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Turkey: New attempts to limit online access and freedom of speech
The Turkish government has been heavily critised for implementing censorship on the Internet and other media. Currently, over 100 000 websites are officially blocked in the country. Additionally, popular websites such as Twitter, Facebook and YouTube have been frequently blocked with or without a court order. Other than officially blocking websites, Turkish Internet Service Providers […]
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Journalists detained in Turkey for using encryption
On 27 August, a British journalist and a cameraman working for Vice News, a news channel that broadcasts in-depth documentaries about current subjects, and their fixer were detained in Turkey while reporting in Diyarbakir, the main city of the country’s predominantly Kurdish southeastern region. At the beginning of September, the three men were charged by […]
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A new wave of Internet blocking in Turkey
On 25 July, the Turkish government ordered the blocking of 65 popular dissident and Kurdish websites and temporarily slowed down Twitter and Facebook access. This follows the government’s air attack against the Islamic State (Isis) and Kurdish forces in Syria. A few days earlier, Twitter was blocked entirely for a few hours. On 20 July, […]
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Turkey blocks political websites
Engelli Web is an independent monitoring website that lists websites blocked by the Turkish government. Currently it lists over 80 000 domains and the number keeps rising. The real figure is probably much higher, because the government does not disclose the exact list of banned sites. Although the majority of the sites are blocked on […]
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Turkish student sentenced for re-tweeting satirical news
A Turkish university student was sentenced for one year for re-tweeting a satirical article that appeared on “Zaytung”, a popular Turkish website which publishes false and satirical stories in a journalistic style. Meral Tutcali, a student in Anadolu University, was sentenced by the provincial court of Adana to one year in jail for “insulting a […]
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Social media platforms blocked again in Turkey
Turkish authorities ordered access to 166 websites, including Twitter, Facebook and YouTube, to be blocked after photos of a hostage crisis that ended with the death of a government prosecutor were circulated in the social media platforms. On 31 March 2015, in Istanbul’s courthouse, two militants took Mehmet Selim Kiraz hostage. He was the prosecutor […]
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Turkish academics threaten Twitter with legal action
On 20 January 2015, two Turkish law professors sent a legal notice to Twitter representatives in Turkey and the US demanding to cease the removal of content and blocking individual accounts that have been requested by Turkish government. The notice points out examples of alleged violations of freedom of expression in court orders restricting internet […]
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Yet another internet blocking law in Turkey
This article is also available in: Deutsch: Neues Gesetz über Internetsperren in der Türkei In recent years, online censorship and the deteriorating situation regarding the freedom of speech has raised serious concerns in Turkey. The large majority of the traditional mainstream media is either directly or indirectly under the government control, and the Internet remains one […]
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ENDitorial: Malmström – Always there to protect US
Now that Commissioner Cecilia Malmström will be taking over as the EU’s Trade Commissioner, and as the Commissioner in charge of negotiating the controversial TTIP trade deal with the USA, it is a useful time to cast our minds back to her achievements as Commissioner with responsibility for Home Affairs in the European Union. Commissioner […]
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Turkey: Constitutional Court overturns Internet law amendment
On 8 September, the Turkish Government passed an amendment to the existing Internet law (#5651). On 2 October, however, Turkey’s Constitutional Court annulled the most crucial parts of the amendment. The amendment that was passed “aims to protect the dignity and privacy of individuals who become victims of defamation on the Internet.” It provided a […]
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