Turkey's Capricious Filtering - Just Too Easy

Turkey has made headlines lately for its capricious filtering; although previous incidents involved filtering sites which insulted Kemal Ataturk or "Turkishness" in general, lately, the filtering seems nearly impulsive.

A site entitled List of websites blocked by Turkish Telecom...or how Turkey disgraces herself shows that, while many of the blocked sites are pornographic by nature, there are plenty which aren't. One can search by categories on the site: the category entitled "Harun Yahya/Adnan Oktar" refers to Turkish creationist Adnan Oktar, who of late has come under fire in the news for his incessant filtering requests in Turkish courts; another category entitled "Mistake/Overkill" shows that the Turkish Telecom isn't even careful: "imbd.com" appears to be filtered in place of popular film database "imdb.com" (why that site was meant to be filtered in the first place remains unknown).

It seems that the majority of filtered sites not relating to gambling or pornography fall into two categories: those which insult Turkishness (including those insulting Kemal Ataturk) and those which Adnan Oktar has managed to get shut down. As we said earlier, it's amazing that one man has the ability to get so many sites filtered.

The administrator of Mindtrick.net pointed me to a Turkish site to which anyone may submit a filtering request. The site [in Turkish] breaks sites down into nine simple categories, making it simple for anyone to register a complaint.

In other words, anyone could play the role of Adnan Oktar. It seems that, without change, it won't be long until Turkey has censored the entire Internet.