Blocking of Wikipedia in Turkey
On April 29 and 30, 2017, the Turkish government blocked access to Wikipedia for users in Turkey . This affected all language versions of the online encyclopedia .
On December 26, 2019, the Constitutional Court of the Republic of Turkey ruled that Wikipedia's ban violates freedom of expression in Turkey and must be lifted. The ban was lifted on January 15, 2020.
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On the morning of April 29, 2017, the organization Turkey Blocks , which deals with press and internet censorship in Turkey, announced that from 8 a.m. local time, several internet service providers such as Uydunet, Turkcell and other landline and mobile phone providers would have access to all Language versions of Wikipedia has been blocked. One provider, TTNET , was only partially blocked . The loss of availability was described as compliant with Internet filters intended for censorship . The responsible telecommunications authority Bilgi Teknolojileri ve İletişim Kurumu (BTK) announced that the wikipedia.org site has been blocked in accordance with a temporary ordinance.
| Which Wikipedia language versions were retrieved from Turkey? | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Turkish language Wikipedia | 79.3% | |||
| English language Wikipedia | 17.0% | |||
| Arabic language Wikipedia | 1.1% | |||
| Other Wikipedias | 2.6% | |||
| Wikipedia views by state - February 2017 | ||||
| Which Wikipedia language versions will be retrieved from Turkey after the lock? | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| English language Wikipedia | 48.0% | |||
| Turkish language Wikipedia | 41.2% | |||
| Arabic language Wikipedia | 1.8% | |||
| Other Wikipedias | 9.0% | |||
| Wikimedia Traffic Analysis Report - Wikipedia Page Views Per Country - Breakdown. March 2018 | ||||
In addition to the Turkish-language and English-language Wikipedia , which are most widely read in Turkey, all other language versions of Wikipedia were also affected .
In an English-language Twitter message from April 30, 2017, the BTK gave the following reasons for this:
“• Despite all the efforts, the content that falsely claims Turkey's support for terrorist organizations was not removed from Wikipedia.
• This content was not allowed to be edited with accurate information.
• Since Wikipedia broadcasts in HTTPS protocol, it is technically impossible to filter by individual URLs to block only relevant content.
• Therefore, entire Wikipedia content had to be filtered.
• Wikipedia editors must do what is necessary for this and similar content. "
Translation:
“• Despite all efforts, the content falsely claiming Turkey's support for terrorist organizations has not been removed from Wikipedia.
• It was not allowed to edit this content with correct information.
• Since Wikipedia uses the HTTPS protocol, it is technically not possible to filter URLs individually in order to block only the content in question.
• Therefore the entire Wikipedia had to be filtered.
• Wikipedia authors must do what is necessary for this content and for similar content. "
Legal process
The press and freedom of expression in Turkey is through Article 26 of the 1982 Turkish Constitution guarantees, but de facto repeatedly exposed interventions. The procedure for blocking and its control by the courts is regulated in Law No. 5651 .
The second civil peace court in Ankara named the following Wikipedia articles as the cause of the lock:
In the opinion of the responsible Turkish authorities, these articles falsely claimed that Turkey supported terrorist organizations. On May 5, 2017 Judge of the first criminal court in Ankara rejected the application of the Wikimedia Foundation , based in San Francisco from Reinstatement. The Foundation then filed a constitutional complaint with the Constitutional Court of the Republic of Turkey . On December 26, 2019, the Constitutional Court upheld the Foundation's lawsuit and ruled that blocking Wikipedia violated freedom of expression. The implementation of the judgment was sent to a court in Ankara. Wikimedia Germany called the decision a great success.
The Wikimedia Foundation had also filed a complaint with the European Court of Human Rights .
The Turkish Transport Minister Ahmet Arslan called on the NTV station that Wikipedia should set up a representative office in Turkey and pay taxes.
Reactions
The Istanbul city council invited the founder of Wikipedia Jimmy Wales to an Expo event on May 2, 2017 . Wales has been removed from the invitation list for the “World Cities Expo Istanbul 2017” from May 15 to 18, the Turkish city administration said without giving any reason.
There have been numerous reports and comments in the print media around the world about the Wikipedia block in Turkey. Constanze Kurz reported in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung on May 2, 2017 under the headlines When "national security" is threatened, the Turkish government is allowed to block websites - and often makes use of it. Now it has hit Wikipedia. Another arbitrary act by Erdogan . Turkey had already gotten used to censorship measures and access restrictions, and too many websites had simply been blocked in recent years. The main German news program Tagesschau and the BBC's European service reported similarly on television .
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The Wikimedia Foundation issued a public statement calling on Turkish authorities to restore access to Wikipedia and examining how the ban can be challenged in Turkish courts. At the same time, Wikipedia authors set up an appeal with a list of signatures against the Turkish ban. The Turkish language Wikipedia put symbolic censorship bars over their logo as a protest , and the Hebrew and Italian language Wikipedia protested against the Turkish ban with banners .
In an interview on May 26, 2017, the Turkish author and Nobel Prize winner for literature, Orhan Pamuk , pointed out how popular Wikipedia is in Turkey, especially among conservatives: "You fill the pages of 'vikipedi' with detailed articles on the history of Turkey." Pamuk reacted accordingly blankly to the blocking of the entire Wikipedia in Turkey: The action reveals “a considerable amount of clumsiness, arbitrariness, even irresponsibility”.
On April 30, 2018, the presidential candidate Akşener of the IYI party announced that if she was elected president, access to Wikipedia would be restored.
In order to bypass the Wikipedia block in Turkey, one could use the Tor network and VPN services . But the Turkish government also took action against these services, and some no longer functioned in Turkey. An offline Wikipedia was also used, as made possible by the free software Kiwix , which has seen 400 percent more downloads since the Wikipedia block in Turkey .
On April 30, 2018, TheVerge.com reported on the ongoing block: Turkey operates the most extensive blocks worldwide (for example , only the Chinese language version was blocked in China until May 17, 2019 , in Turkey as in China after this Date, however, all), which, in connection with the elimination of the free press, has a significant impact on the sources of information in Turkey. The blockade also prevented local authors from working, so that critical voices from abroad would now determine the content of Turkish Wikipedia. Since March 2018, the black censor bar of the logo has been replaced by a red bar with the inscription Özledik (“we miss”) to express how much Wikipedia is missed in Turkey.
See also
- Wikipedia censorship
- Internet censorship
- Freedom of the press in Turkey
- List of media banned in Turkey after the 2016 coup attempt
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b c d Turkish Constitutional Court orders the end of the Wikipedia block. Der Spiegel, December 26, 2019, accessed December 26, 2019 .
- ↑ Wikimedia Foundation : Access to Wikipedia restored in Turkey after more than two and a half years
- ↑ Wikipedia pageviews statistics : Trwiki page views crashed on April 29, 2017
- ↑ a b c Wikipedia blocked in Turkey. In: Turkey Blocks . April 29, 2017. Retrieved April 29, 2017 .
- ↑ a b c d Wikimedia Traffic Analysis Report - Wikipedia Page Views Per Country - Breakdown Monthly requests or daily averages, for period: 1 Feb 2017 - 28 Feb 2017
- ↑ Monthly requests or daily averages, for period: March 2018
- ^ Statement by the BTK. In: Twitter. April 30, 2017, accessed January 2, 2019 .
- ^ Turkey: Law No. 5651 on Regulating Broadcasting in the Internet and Fighting Against Crimes Committed through Internet Broadcasting (as of 2008) . In: wipo.int . Retrieved May 15, 2017.
- ↑ TURKEY. OPINION ON LAW No. 5651 ON REGULATION OF PUBLICATIONS ON THE INTERNET AND COMBATING CRIMES COMMITTED BY MEANS OF SUCH PUBLICATION (“THE INTERNET LAW”) . In: Venice Commission , 107th Plenary Session (Venice, 10-11 June 2016) . June 15, 2016. Retrieved May 15, 2017.
- ↑ Yıldız Yazıcıoğlu: Wikipedia Türkiye İçin 'Sansür' Uygulayacak mı? (tr) . In: American Sesi , May 3, 2017. Retrieved May 6, 2017.
- ↑ Wikipedia remains blocked . In: sueddeutsche.de , May 5, 2017.
- ↑ Wikipedia Foundation goes before the Constitutional Court . In: turkishpress.de . May 9, 2017.
- ↑ a b Martin Thoma: Jura-Prof on Wikipedia lock in Turkey: "This is intimidation tactic" . In: Die Tageszeitung , May 3, 2017.
- ^ Turkey warned Wikipedia over content, demands it open office: minister . In: Reuters , May 11, 2017.
- ↑ İstanbul Büyükşehir Belediyesi, ... ntv, May 2, 2017
- ↑ Turkish authorities block access to Wikipedia: monitor. In: Arab News , Saudi Arabia, April 29, 2017
- ↑ Constanze Kurz : Knowledge as a threat . FAZ , May 2, 2017 (Constanze Kurz reports on the Wikipedia block in Turkey in the FAZ under the headlines When "national security" is threatened, the Turkish government is allowed to block websites - and makes frequent use of it. Now Wikipedia has it Another arbitrary act by Erdogan. )
- ↑ Official order: Turkey blocks Wikipedia . In: tagesschau.de . April 29, 2017. Retrieved on May 14, 2017., 5:22 pm: The lock was discovered in the morning and affected all speech output, "Turkey Blocks" wrote on its website. The regulatory authority BTK stated that its decision was preceded by technical and legal considerations.
- ↑ Turkish authorities block Wikipedia without giving reason . In: BBC News , April 29, 2017.
- ↑ Wikimedia Foundation calls on Turkish authorities to restore access to Wikipedia . In: blog.wikimedia.de . April 30, 2017.
- ↑ Wikimedia Foundation urges Turkish authorities to restore access to Wikipedia . In: blog.wikimedia.org . April 30, 2017.
- ↑ Response to 2017 ban in Turkey . In: meta.wikimedia.org . Retrieved May 16, 2017.
- ↑ Orhan Pamuk urges to support the new Turkish middle class. In: sueddeutsche.de. May 26, 2017. Retrieved July 6, 2018 .
- ↑ İYİ Party vows to reopen access to Wikipedia if elected. Retrieved May 1, 2018 .
- ↑ Tor blocked in Turkey as government cracks down on VPN use . In: Turkey Blocks . December 18, 2016. Retrieved May 18, 2017.
- ↑ Wikipedia Yasaksa Kiwix Var . In: Bianet - Bagimsiz Iletisim Agi . 4th May 2017.
- ↑ TheVerge.com: Turkey marks one year without Wikipedia , April 30, 2018