Turkish Court Establishes A Special 'Expert Panel' To Determine If Comparing Prime Minister To Gollum Is An Insult
from the what-about-mocking-the-whole-thing? dept
The government of Turkey has a really... weird relationship with the internet. The government seems quite quick to attack internet services and to shut them down if anyone says anything even mildly critical of the government. Starting about six years ago, we noted that Turkey would do things like banning all of YouTube or Blogger to try to block a single mocking or critical video or blog post. These bans seemed to come and go -- sometimes leading the actual citizens of Turkey to protest the outright censorship of useful services. In the last couple of years, things have ramped up a bit. An attempt to block a single blog post resulted in 60 million Wordpress sites being blocked. Turkey's President, Recep Tayyip Erdogan at one point ordered a ban on all of Twitter... even filing a lawsuit against his own government over this. There have also been attempts to ban Facebook. Oh, and Minecraft. In fact, just the other day the European Court of Human Rights said that Turkey's earlier YouTube ban violated freedom of expression in Turkey.Indeed, that's pretty clearly the point. The Turkish government, and Erdogan in particular, don't want freedom of expression. Almost all of this stems from people posting jokes or mocking content about the government -- and Erdogan in particular. Erdogan seems to have incredibly thin skin for a ruler of a major country. But even with all of that as background, the latest story out of Turkey is super weird. A Turkish physician, Bilgin Ciftci, is in court for potentially insulting Erdogan via social media for sharing this image on social media:
The court ordered that the investigation be conducted by a group composed of two academics, two behavioral scientists or psychologists and an expert on cinema and television productions.I'm not sure I'd agree that Gollum "was not a bad character," but this is a joke on the internet. What kind of President gets upset about that? Ciftci, for his part, seems to recognize how ridiculous this is:
The chief judge gave the decision after Hicran Danisman, a lawyer representing Ciftci, asked him whether or not he had seen the movie series “The Lord of the Rings.” Saying that he had seen only seen parts of them, the chief judge postponed the hearing until Feb. 13, 2016. Danisman stated in a previous hearing that neither the prosecutor nor the chief judge had seen the movies, even though the character of Gollum was at the center of the case.
Ciftci claimed that Gollum was not a bad character and that he did not insult anyone.
The 47-year-old doctor told The Independent that he was “very surprised” when he learned he would be prosecuted. The case, he said, showed that Turkey was going through “a very difficult time.” Asked if he regretted sharing the images, he said: "I see it as a question of freedom of speech and of humour. I don't think I've done anything to regret."Maybe Turkey should just ban the internet from Erdogan's home and office.
In the meantime, of course, what's happening is that this silly jokey picture that Erdogan is apparently so offended by is getting shared absolutely everywhere, because what better way to point out how ridiculous it is to try to censor this image than to make sure it's seen by just about everyone. One wonders if Erdogan knows or cares about this -- or if he's just trying to create a chilling effect for others in the future. Still, if he wanted to cement his reputation as being particularly thin-skinned about public commentary and criticism, it's difficult to think of a better way to do so.
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Filed Under: bilgin ciftci, chilling effect, free speech, gollum, insult, joke, recep tayyip erdogan, turkey
Reader Comments
The First Word
“Judge can't decide, esatblishes expert panel
If it takes a previously non-existent, special expert panel to determine if it is an insult, how was the doctor supposed to know?Subscribe: RSS
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Misplaced insult
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Time to give mrs Streisand some rest
the Erdogan-effect.
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Stop violating identity rights of creative work! Stop infringing on freedoms!! You freedom hater you!
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The experts are Bilbo and Frodo Baggins.
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and Anatoly Antonov and Vladimir Putin on the Sultan side.
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YOU SHALL NOT PASS
Gandolph.
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the opinion of ONE expert on cinema and television production (Geek fluent in Klingon) equals the opinion of 2x psychologists or 2x behavioral scientists
or 2x academics !!!
finally the geeks are taking over
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Judge can't decide, esatblishes expert panel
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The EU is comprised of Secular nations with basic human rights, these two things are not optional when joining the EU and these very fundamental things do not exist in Turkey.
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good lord, this isn't the time for turkey to do something like this.
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or you are not born and living in the EU
or you have been brainwashed via education
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-Spain
-Greece
-Cyprus
-Germany
-France
-...
Turkey is actually PERFECT for the EU rights.
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Which is it:
1) EU is not secular?
2) EU does not provide for basic human rights?
3) These two things are optional in joining the EU?
4) Turkey is secular?
5) Turkey does provide basic human rights?
On a side note, brainwashing and education are, by definition, not even remotely similar. In practice however ...
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Film at eleven
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Insulting
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And for what it's worth, Gollum isn't a bad character. He's a great character. And any evil he does is because he's been corrupted by the ring. The ring is bad. Gollum is not.
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Clearly, the person that Erdogan needs...
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Re: Misplaced insult
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Question
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Erdogan Is President, Not Prime Minister
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Re: Clearly, the person that Erdogan needs...
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Why not? they let them in NATO, didn't they?
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the concensus here
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Re: Misplaced insult
Gollum vs turkey8
8shift keys and caps broke
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He's got it already.
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I mean, seriously, guys? How did an epic clown like Erdogan come to power then keep hold of it? Can you imagine what he's like out of the spotlight?
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Bonus with the above: he answered a series of questions about the EU and Turkey with a video of a US representative presumably talking about domestic policy (I say presumably because I won't waste any more time with this kind of random link than it takes to see the title of the video and its source on the off chance they have a point).
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However, a link with no comment where you have to click on it to even see what the video references, let alone if it's from a reliable source or even relevant to the conversation is an immediate red flag. I've had many arguments where I try to explain how the link is irrelevant, misleading or even outright lies. It's rare that someone who reverted to simply pasting YouTube links was interested in an honest discussion, in my experience. Here you'll note, the AC who did this has not bothered to even address the question of how the video was relevant to statements about the EU, let alone answer the questions posed to him.
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