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DE RUEHAK #0151/01 0251106
ZNR UUUUU ZZH
P 251106Z JAN 08 ZDK
FM AMEMBASSY ANKARA
TO RUEHC/SECSTATE WASHDC PRIORITY 5040
INFO RUEHZL/EUROPEAN POLITICAL COLLECTIVE
RHMFISS/EUCOM POLAD VAIHINGEN GE
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RUEHAK/USDAO ANKARA TU

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  Though the Ankara court repealed its 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