Israel Matzav

Turkey told to stop blocking YouTube

As I noted at the beginning of the month YouTube is blocked in Turkey.


On Tuesday, Europe's main human rights and security body, of which Turkey is a member, ordered the Turks to unblock YouTube.

Europe’s main human rights and security body told Turkey Tuesday to stop blocking Google’s video-sharing website YouTube and thousands of other sites banned under its Internet law. The Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) said the law, introduced in 2007, has been expanded to bar over 5,000 sites in the past two years and is severely damaging freedom of expression and information rights. Turkey initially passed the law to restrict access to pornography and other content it deemed harmful to children. The Vienna-based, 56-nation OSCE says the law has now been used to go far beyond that. Turkey, an OSCE member, first started blocking YouTube in 2008 after it ruled that some videos posted on the site were insulting to Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, founder of the modern republic. The Turkish government has also cited offences including child pornography and encouragement of suicide for blocking websites. The OSCE said its media freedoms chief Dunja Mijatovic had written to Turkey’s foreign minister to complain about new restrictions introduced earlier this month that have hampered access to other Google services such as its instant translation site and web traffic tracker. Mr Mijatovic said the alleged reason behind the block was an unsettled tax row between Turkish authorities and Google but that this matter was not covered in the original law.

Wouldn't it be great if ordinary Turks got to see those Mavi Marmara videos?

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 9:18 PM