Turkey Bans Blogger

UPDATE!! — It is now known why Blogger is banned in Turkey. Click here for the new article.

Since today, whoever tries to access Blogger or any *.blogspot.com domain from Turkey will get the following message on my screen:

Click to enlarge.

This is the same message we get if we try to visit YouTube, which is also banned in Turkey. In the past blogging platform WordPress.com has been banned as well (read more), to much dismay of many Turkish bloggers.

It was suspected that the reason for this has something to do with Adnan Oktar, by some considered the leading Muslim advocate for creationism, who has in the past managed to get WordPress, Google Groups, as well as Richard Dawkins’ website banned. It was then suggested however, that Oktar was active in Istanbul courts and this verdict was passed in Diyarbakır in South East Turkey.

UPDATE – It is now known that it was Digiturk, not Adnan Oktar, that caused the ban. Read the new article here: 
http://www.basbasbas.com/blog/2008/10/26/digiturk-causes-turkish-ban-of-bloggerblogspot/

Turkey’s EU ambitions seem paradoxical to the infringement on the freedom of press and speech of its citizens, residents and visitors by banning sites like this. This is not China. This has to stopped. Good thing the EU’s making a blacklist of censoring countries and are creating software for people in censoring countries to use to overcome the censorship (Global Online Freedom Act).

The court order of the ban on Blogger is also in very stark contrast to yesterday’s court approval of gay and group sex. Turkey’s a country of opposites.

Some useful links to unblock YouTube/Blogger (blogspot)/other blocked pages in Turkey:

• http://atunnel.com/
• http://unblocked.org/
• http://unblockyoutube.org/

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