Well, I was hoping to find something light and fluffy to talk about today, but then I came across this article at Boing Boing, telling me that I no longer had access to one of my favourite sites, YouTube (even now it feels weird to think that you can click on that link and get to the site, but I can’t). Unlike many places in the world, Turkey is a nation whose inhabitants have tremendous personal freedom, and until today we had the luxury of looking at internet censorship in places like China as something that happens “over there.” So not being able to access YouTube today is a big wake-up call for me, especially since there was no announcement from my ISP and I had to learn about the block from an unrelated web site in the United States. It makes me wonder what might be next under the guillotine, though it does seem that the particular law that was allegedly broken is very specific in that it only sets parameters governing the public portrayal of Atatürk, and can’t be used as a blanket to censor other speech.
I’ve been told by a couple of intelligent Turkish sources that court decisions like these can be mostly for show and often get reversed quite quickly, but of course everything about this situation is still unfolding around the word “allegedly,” so I think we’ll just have to wait and see what happens. I’m not particularly interested in starting a political argument in this forum, but I will say that I am an active YouTube account holder, as are many of my friends and associates, and so of course this decision affects all of us who (A) didn’t break any laws and (B) pay a monthly fee for access to the entire internet. A few hours ago I was really wound up about the whole situation, but I’m settling down a bit now as new information filters in from various sources and things don’t seem quite as drastically doom-and-gloom as they did this afternoon. I’m hoping for a mutually happy resolution soon.
I’m disabling comments on this post for personal reasons you might be able to guess, so if you have something you’d like to say about this issue you’ll have to contact me privately.
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