Copied the middle bit of a newsarticle about internet bans in Turkey"

Two different Turkeys

The government´s position gets even more confusing when people recall that Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan confessed that he regularly found ways around the YouTube ban, and encouraged others to do the same.

President Abdullah Gul put a message on Twitter recently saying he was "definitely against" YouTube and Google services being blocked.

There are two different Turkeys talking here.

There is Istanbul, buzzing with entrepreneurial activity and cultural life, where people aspire to European levels of wealth and freedom. And there is the capital Ankara, a city of bureaucrats, the centre of military and political power. Ankara is where nearly all the internet restrictions emanate. The city is dominated by the austere, neo-classical mausoleum of the founding father Ataturk, where people line up every day to pay their respects to modern Turkey´s founding father.

Not far from the mausoleum, in a nondescript residential building, is the office of the Ataturk Thought Association, an organisation dedicated to protecting the secular heritage of the first president. They have been behind many of the complaints against Google, YouTube and other websites. Tansel Colacan is the formidable chairwoman of the association, a retired senior judge. And she is unapologetic about the impact of her complaints. "For us Ataturk is a symbol of democracy and women´s emancipation," she says. "This is about respect for him. I am not bothered by the impact of the court decision."

Taken from a nice article:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/world/europe/10480877.stm