Turkey bans YouTube

A very bold thing to do on the Turkish half. Shame the Greeks didnt stop any of this childsplay before it got worse.

Big shame.

Aye, sad indeed; but sort of painfully ironic to read this after watching SP 11x01

Damn - wheres that video :p

funny isn't it, stunts like this just publicise the whole problem - Also i find it amusing that insulting "turkishness" is against the law - lol :p

I also find it a bit sad how much their reacting to it, i mean there are plenty of racist videos on youtube, but it seems like this is just being blown out of proportion

Good idea. It does say its temporary so maybe these immature actions will stop when it comes back (although I doubt sadly).

what the hell is wrong with you guys? honestly. get along before I start knocking heads.

I think that this case generally underscores the complete cultural transition that the internet represents, and how utterly incapable our existing institutions really are to deal with it.

As time goes by, we are going to see more and more of this sort of thing, and not just with youtube, or in non G8 countries. It's really impossible to know how our law will cope with this kind of problem - the internet is an almost insurmountable obstacle to it.

i just watched this on the news..... hey... this is better than to start a war.....

wow.. way to overreact :-/ you call someone a bad name and the governement gets called in

Exactly.Banning a whole site because some teenager thought it was funny to insult someone else is not acceptable. This kind of thing shouldn't happen in this day and age.It seems that Turkey has a long way to go until it is regarded as a fully democratic country.

Originally Posted by alexandros1313
Exactly.Banning a whole site because some teenager thought it was funny to insult someone else is not acceptable. This kind of thing shouldn't happen in this day and age.It seems that Turkey has a long way to go until it is regarded as a fully democratic country.

I would like to point out that democracy is a system of politics where the rulers (and, in theory, decisions in the country, though in reality it's an elected dictatorship...) are voted in by a majority of the people in the population.

This ruling would be a case of authoritarianism, which is the opposite of liberalism, but you can have a democratic authoritarian society where there are many limits on freedom but you have the right to vote, or a democratic liberal society, or a despotic liberal society. Just, in general, they don't tend to go hand in hand.

Not trying to have a dig, I just think it's important when we start wars for democracy, that people realise what democracy is.

As for the ruling, I disagree in one sense that the government shouldn't interfere with freedoms, but I agree because it has shown the Turkish government is willing to see a conflict and stop it.

Well said. My point was more about freedom than democracy per se, but your post explains it more thoroughly. Anyway, I don't think that the purpose of the ban was to stop a conflict, rather to stop these videos from being seen by the Turkish people. This is understandable, of course, but it seems to me that the Turks used a bazooka to kill a fly. Besides, before this ban almost nobody new of these videos but now everyone knows. Bad publicity is still publicity :)

And that comes from a country trying to join the European Union!!

Don't mean to be a bore but this has very little to do with freedom of the internet and everything to do with the relationship between Greece and Turkey on the one hand and nature of the Turkish state on the other. I'm not an expert but in case anyone really doesn't know the background I'll try to give you a relevant potted summary.

While there are obviously two sides to the story, the historical context from the point of view of the Greek makers and posters of the video is that their country was forcibly incorporated in the Ottoman Turk Empire for a long time and more recently, after they became independent, the Turks invaded and occupied the northern part of Greek Cyprus. Before you jump down my throat I would stress this is my best guess at their point of view, not my own! So yes the video is probably pretty childish but a sense of being kicked around will do that to people. And obviously the Turks react as they do partly because they see the same events, and others, very differently. If you want to get an idea of what this might feel like then think about England and Ireland during the worst of the troubles, times about 10?

In addition, the modern Turkish state is very much a construct and maintaining it's 'Turkishness' is very much part of that construct. Anything that is seen as challenging this it is regarded as very threatening. Some of the obvious challenges include: Kurdish or Armenian identity/separatism, challenges to the secular nature of the state, challenges to the position of the military, any suggestion that there was a genocide against the Armenians and, in this context, anything except great reverence to the state founder Ataturk who was apparently mocked in the video. Basically the Turkish Government will tend completely shut down any discussion or channel for discussion which leads to any of these 'sacred truths' being threatened.

Hence my total lack of surprise at the decision to shut down YouTube in Turkey. If something with similar content to the video had gone into a newspaper the government reaction wouldn't have been to demand a retraction or right of reply - they'd have shut down the paper. What I think is more interesting is what the govt will do if they really can't shut this kind of stuff out. And after this banning I'd expect there to be more jibes of this kind and more publicity for them. The Turkish govt probably don't have the technical ability or political clout to censor the internet in the way China has managed to do so what will they do next?

Anyway, enough of that. I'll leave you with the thought that wearing the wrong kind of hat is a criminal offence in Turkey....

A series of tubes

That is an excellent summary of the troubled past between Greece and Turkey. Indeed Greece was conquered by the Ottoman Empire in the 15th century and won independence in the 19th century. Relations between Greece and Turkey are improving slowly, but Turkey still has problems with freedom of speech, minority rights and other things that all "western" nations take for granted. In addition to that, Turkey continues to occupy northern Cyprus and makes territorial claims against Greece frequently.The Greek government wants Turkey to join the EU in the hope that they will be forced to become more liberal.
I also agree with the poster above that Turkey needs to have a totalitarian mentality in order to stay united as a country.
I feel the need to point out that I am Greek, but I think that I am not biased and I certainly agree that the video that started this whole thing should never have been uploaded. Noone has a right to insult someone else's historical figures.

How come I'm not too surprised. I'm kinda pissed by the fact that there's even some sort of conversation if it should be part of EU! There's soooo much problems with human rights in that country it makes no sense.

It was the same thing with the images of mohammed! CMON THEY ARE FREAKING IMAGES/VIDEOS. Just ridiculous over-reaction.

Censoring the internets just isn't right.

hhmmm lol i am surprised that this didn't happen earlier. lol i can even bet that the guy who did it is from Cyprus, it would be so typical for a villager who knows how to use a computer to do so.
i am not even surprised one bit from the Turkish reaction, and i can also bet that youtube isn't the only website they ban.