A court in Istanbul has issued an order denying access to the video-sharing website YouTube. The state owned Turk Telecom implemented the ban today after an escalating dispute between Greek and Turkish users of the site.

The court order was issued yesterday and most internet users logging onto the site in Turkey are met with a holding page with a Turkish message, which translates as: “Access to this site has been denied by court order ! ...”.

Greek and Turkish YouTube users have been trading video insults over the past few months, attracting much coverage in the Turkish press. Greek videos reportedly accused the founding president of the Turkish Republic, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, of homosexuality; a Turkish user responded by calling Greece the birthplace of homosexuality.

It is illegal to criticise either Ataturk or Turkishness in Turkey and the prosecutor’s office in Istanbul acted despite YouTube’s agreement to take down the offending videos.

Turkey wishes to join the EU in the next round of enlargement and has been criticised for its failure to safeguard freedom of expression. The country’s most famous author, Orhan Pamuk, faced up to three years in jail after being charged with “insulting Turkishness” after talking to a Swiss newspaper about Turkey’s human rights record. The case was dropped in January after international condemnation.

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.

A spokesman from the Turkish Embassy in London said: “The videos included parts which insulted Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, our founding father. There is no explanation from the Turkish government, it was a court verdict. English profanities were placed on top of the Turkish flag and pictures of Ataturk.”

Videos posted on the user-generated site included a Greek marching song, which celebrated the bloody history between the two nations and labelled Turkey “Little Asia”.

Paul Doany, the head of Turk Telecom, the country’s largest internet provider explained: “We are not in the position of saying that what YouTube did was an insult, that it was right or wrong.”

He told the state-run Anatolia news agency: “A court decision was proposed to us, and we are doing what that court decision says.”

Some of the smaller private internet providers have not yet implemented the ban.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/europe/article1483840.ece

It's terrible when governments try to control people by banning access to information. Is google videos site also banned?

http://video.google.com/

Are you serious-you really don't know why?

For any coverment it is a risk, if people start to use they own brains and think. That is one reason, why in some countries wemen can not go to school. Thinking woman is a threat to dominating men. I consider myself as a feminist man^^

For example if it is not ok for a woman to cheat his husband, what gives the right to man to cheat his wife? Same rights for both sexes ^^ I am not afright of intelligent wemen, i love talking with other people abaut difficult issues, and that is only way how we learn more abaut ourselves XD

I like those reusable sacks that they sell. I will have to buy more now!

hehehe they're wanting to ban plastic bags in California too, but I can see why because they take forver to biodegrade...bring back paper bags! make that paper bags made from recycled OTHER paper bags!

What about string bags?

must had been banned...



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