TURKISH COURTS BLOCK ACCESS TO "YOUTUBE" WEBSITE

UNCLAS SECTION 01 OF 02 ANKARA 000151 SIPDIS SENSITIVE SIPDIS E.O. 12958: N/A TAGS: PGOV PHUM PREL OSCE TU SUBJECT: TURKISH COURTS BLOCK ACCESS TO "YOUTUBE" WEBSITE AGAIN REF: 07 ANKARA 542 ANKARA 00000151 001.2 OF 002 ¶1. (SBU) Summary: Turkish courts banned access to the immensely popular "YouTube" website for five days beginning January 17, to block a picture with swear words imposed over Turkey's founding father, Ataturk, and the Turkish flag. The GOT maintains the courts are properly implementing a new Internet law passed May 7, 2007. The incident -- the third time in the past year the GOT has blocked YouTube -- generated less media attention than past cases, and has yet to spur YouTube users to raise their collective voice. A prolonged ban or blockage of another popular youth site, such as "Facebook," could spark a more spirited response from Turkey's generally apolitical youth and might become another obstacle in Turkey's EU accession path. End summary. -------------- Turkish Court Orders YouTube Access Blocked -------------- ¶2. (U) Courts in Istanbul, Ankara, and Sivas blocked access to the popular "YouTube" video portal January 17th, after prosecutors in each jurisdiction alleged that pictures superimposing swear words over Ataturk and the Turkish flag violated the 1951 law prohibiting "publicly insulting the memory of Ataturk." Turkey's Telecommunications Presidency (Telekom) immediately enforced the ban; users trying to access the site received notices the site was blocked under an Ankara court order. ¶3. (U) Telekom President Tayfun Acarer told the press YouTube did not respond to warnings over the past two weeks to pull the offensive content; it had also ignored several regulatory submission deadlines. YouTube, owned by Google, issued a statement saying the company hoped access would be re-established quickly. Though the Ankara court repealed its order on January 21, Telekom continued to implement the Istanbul and Sivas court-ordered ban. Many Turkish youths accessed YouTube using a proxy server -- a well-known technique to circumvent government bans. Telekom in turn began to block commonly used proxy sites. YouTube remove the video at issue and the ban was lifted January 23. -------------- Turkey's Internet Regulatory Framework -------------- ¶4. (U) Turkey first blocked YouTube in March 2007, when an Istanbul court ruled the site should be banned due to a cartoon video that lampooned Ataturk as gay (reftel). The ban was lifted two days later after YouTube removed the allegedly offensive videos. In September 2007, a Sivas court ordered a YouTube ban because of videos deemed insulting to Ataturk, President Gul, PM Erdogan, and the Turkish army. "Reporters Without Borders" called the move "a radical and disproportionate precaution against a few documents of an offensive nature," and urged the government to reverse the order. YouTube pulled the offensive material before the ban went into effect. ¶5. (U) A more comprehensive Internet law adopted May 4, 2007 titled "The Fight Against Crimes Committed Through Internet Broadcast" provides that upon a prosecutor's application, a court order may block a website if there is sufficient suspicion that users are committing one of eight crimes via the site, including encouraging suicide or drug abuse, sexual abuse of children, obscenity, prostitution, gambling, and crimes against Ataturk. The new law requires Internet Service Providers (ISPs) to pull the offensive content or face criminal penalties (which courts may reduce to financial penalties). While the first seven crimes are clearly defined, crimes against Ataturk are subject to interpretation and inconsistent application. Individuals who believe a website violates their personal rights can request the ISP remove the offensive content, and may appeal to a criminal court within 15 days if the ISP does not. The ISP must comply with a banning order within 24 hours or face criminal sanctions. ¶6. (SBU) No official statistics are available, but random Internet checks indicate courts are increasingly using the Internet law to ban websites in an ad hoc, inconsistent ANKARA 00000151 002.2 OF 002 manner. Some gambling websites are blocked while others aren't; some slightly racy websites are blocked while more graphic pornography sites are not; and blocked pages often contain no information on the law violated or the court that issued the order. A ban imposed August 17 on all wordpress.com postings, a popular blogger forum, continues to block hundreds of thousands of wordpress blogs, though only some contained allegedly defamatory content. The blocking technology used also appears to cast a wider net than necessary. On repeated occasions, innocuous content ranging from CNN political blogs to CNN finance sites have been blocked with no explanation. ¶7. (SBU) Ministry of Justice Foreign Relations VP Aykut Kilic told us there is no problem with the judiciary's application of the Internet law. He explained that each blocked site should be accompanied by a message indicating the law violated and the ordering court; aberrations were the work of hackers. The judiciary daily is increasing its capacity to deal with a rising number of websites that violate the law, Kilic noted. -------------- -------------- Turkey's Internet Law 5651: The Next Article 301? -------------- -------------- ¶8. (U) Turkish columnists harshly criticized the ban. "Today's Zaman's" Fatma Disli wrote that the ban highlighted Turkey's troubled record on free expression. "Posta's" Mehmet Barlas reasoned that banning "the virtual world" would be infinitely more complex than banning the headscarf. "Star" columnist Ahmet Kekec likened the ban to the book bans instituted after Turkey's 1980 coup. "Sabah's" Emre Akoz argued that the nationalist judiciary was acting hypocritically by repressing free speech in an ultraconservative manner while simultaneously criticizing the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) as too conservative. ¶9. (SBU) Several contacts predicted the Internet law would soon outpace Penal Code Article 301 (criminalizing insulting "Turkishness") as the most widely used method to suppress freedom of expression. Burak Bekdil, a columnist prosecuted under Article 301, said the Internet law's ambiguous wording will attract ever more prosecutions against Turks for expressing themselves on blogs, chat rooms, and websites. Human Rights Agenda Association President Orhan Cengiz believes the law will soon take center stage in the EU's concerns over Turkey's poor record on free speech. Ankara Bar Association President Vedat Cosar worries continued use of the law to ban sites will lower Turkey to a par with regimes that rely on censorship as a policy tool, such as Iran and China. Visit Ankara's Classified Web Site at http://www.intelink.sgov.gov/wiki/Portal:Turk ey WILSON