Ban on YouTube spreads to Google services in Turkey

Monday, June 7, 2010

Access to search engine Google has been limited and most of Google's online services cannot be accessed in Turkey. The access limitation happened due to the blocking of an IP set that belongs to Google. These IP addresses were shared between YouTube and other Google services.

The Turkish news site Hürriyet Daily News reports that Turkey's Telecommunications Communication Presidency (TCP) (a government agency that manages Turkish ISPs) indefinitely shut off access to several Google services. The shut-off came after the banning of YouTube for alleged insults against Turkish Republic founder Mustafa Kemal Atatürk. TCP released an official statement Friday, saying it had blocked access to some Google IP addresses "because of legal reasons". Under Turkish law, it is an offence to "insult Turkishness."

Softpedia states that the limited access to Google could be a result of the government trying to block specific DNS addresses that relate to Google, as part of its ongoing attempts to block YouTube. Since Google services share common software and IP addresses, the search engine itself suffers from access restrictions. Turkish citizens are concerned that this move of the governmental agency was another step towards a complete ban on Google, as exists in China.

Several Internet sites have been banned in Turkey in recent years, and although some of them were subsequently unbanned, most of them remain inaccessible. Engelli Web, a website listing banned sites reports that currently YouTube (since May 2008), Last.fm (since June 26, 2009), and Spanish newspaper El Mundo (since May 14, 2010) are among the banned sites in Turkey. MySpace and WordPress were also among banned sites for a period of time. Websites will be blocked following a court decision or if TCP decides to block on its behalf.

RetweetToday reports that Turkish citizens on Twitter have also reported access problems. Comments about the blockage are being shared using hashtags such as TurkeyCensorGoogle and TurkeyGoogleBan, as well as NoGoogleNoWeb.

Have an opinion on this story? Share it!

Related news

"Court issues YouTube block in Turkey" — Wikinews, March 7, 2007
"YouTube banned in Turkey once again" — Wikinews, January 19, 2008
"Google not accessible in some parts of China" — Wikinews, June 25, 2009

Sources

"Attempting to Ban YouTube, Turkey Restricts Several Google Services" — Softpedia, June 5, 2010
"Google new target of Turkish censors" — Hürriyet Daily News, June 4, 2010
"Turkish ISPs Block Several Google Services?" — RetweetToday, June 4, 2010
"Turquía bloquea el acceso a ELMUNDO.es" — El Mundo, May 15, 2010
"Turkey - Access Blocked: A Disturbing Trend in Freedom of Speech" — The Women’s International Perspective News Service, October 16, 2008

Share this:

External links

Engelli Web" A Turkish Internet website listing the "Currently Banned Internet Sites"

This page is archived, and is no longer publicly editable.

Articles presented on Wikinews reflect the specific time at which they were written and published, and do not attempt to encompass events or knowledge which occur or become known after their publication.

Got a correction? Add the template {{editprotected}} to the talk page along with your corrections, and it will be brought to the attention of the administrators.

Please note that due to our archival policy, we will not alter or update the content of articles that are archived, but will only accept requests to make grammatical and formatting corrections.

Note that some listed sources or external links may no longer be available online due to age.

The text of this article is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 License