Turkey Joins China in Internet Tyrant Week Celebration

Earlier this week, Quinn reported here that China blocked LiveJournal.

Today comes news that a Turkish court ordered the country's ISPs to block YouTube due to a Greece vs. Turkey flame war, where opposing sides used YouTube videos to taunt one another. According to the Associated Press's account, the Turks grew incensed by Greek taunts that the Turks were gay.

The video prompting the ban allegedly said Ataturk and the Turkish people were homosexuals, news reports said. The CNN-Turk Web site featured a link allowing Turks to complain directly to YouTube about the "insult."

On its front page on Wednesday, the newspaper Hurriyet said thousands of people had written YouTube and that the Ataturk videos had been removed from the site. "YouTube got the message," the headline said.

It is a 'crime' in Turkey to insult the country's founder Ataturk, any national symbol, 'Turkishness' or the government and military, which led the court to ordering the blocking of YouTube. Article 301 states:

1. Public denigration of Turkishness, the Republic or the Grand National Assembly of Turkey shall be punishable by imprisonment of between six months and three years.

2. Public denigration of the Government of the Republic of Turkey, the judicial institutions of the State, the military or security structures shall be punishable by imprisonment of between six months and two years.

3. In cases where denigration of Turkishness is committed by a Turkish citizen in another country the punishment shall be increased by one third.

4. Expressions of thought intended to criticize shall not constitute a crime.

The UK Times reports that "Nurten Altinok, the press prosecutor at the Istanbul Republican Chief Prosecutor’s Office, asked the Istanbul police to provide evidence of the criticisms of Ataturk on YouTube. After studying a CD of the videos she asked a magistrate to review the case, a court order was issued by an Istanbul criminal court yesterday."

27B would like to state, on principle, that "Turkishness, The Republic and the Grand National Assembly" are all whiny mama's babies who cry when the kid across the street makes a face at them. Let a thousand videos on a thousand webpages across the world taunt Turkish nationalism, the mere existence of a governmental position called "press prosecutor" and the Turkish government's petty culture of censorship, while Turkey responds by trying to stick its fingers in its ears.

Photo: Majorvols