The “Association for the Freedom of Expression – İÖD” published its annual report where the Turkish government’s prevention of access to internet sites are documented
Turkey’s AKP government is and has been on a paranoid trip over what the citizens can see over the internet.
Many institutions and government departments have been given and charged with monitoring the internet and report and request sites to be banned.
The “Association for the Freedom of Expression – İÖD” published its annual report where the Turkish government’s prevention of access to internet sites are documented.
It comes as no surprise that many sites banned in Turkey are Kurdish, or news sites that report events happening in Kurdistan. Sites that have a left or socialist views are also in the majority in the banned list. In addition to Dicle Haber Ajansı, Azadiya Welat, Özgür Gündem, Rudaw, RojNews, ANF, Jin News sites that have a continuous access ban for being too Kurdish, SiyasiHaber.org and Sendika.org is also cited as examples of left sites that have become the targets of the Turkish government.
The bans had reached a high in 2015 with 80,553 sites prevented from view in Turkey. However, this number increased exponentially in 2019 to 206,351.
In the list of sites cut from access is Wikipedia in Turkey. People of Turkey are not allowed to access Wikipedia because, as the claim goes, somebody wrote something critical of the founder of the country, Mustafa Kemal.
The report stated, “The censor of the Internet has reached a striking level. This could also be seen on the annual social media platform transparency reports. When one compares Turkey in annual Twitter Transparency Report to the other countries, it is also striking that Turkey is very high on censoring. Since Twitter is used more than other social media platforms in Turkey for political discussions and expression, the number of times the demands came to remove or make a tweet unavailable is much higher than Russia or France.”
Sendika.Org News
