Turkey's Prime Minister Sues His Own Country Over Twitter

from the seriously-losing-it dept

As we've been reporting for nearly a year now, the Turkish prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, really hates Twitter. Indeed, it is arguably becoming something of an obsession for him, to the point where he has now taken the unprecedented step of suing his own country over it, as Hurriyet Daily News reports:

Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan made an application to the Constitutional Court on April 18 over the failure to implement court rulings requesting the removal of content violating his rights, according to a senior official from his office. Erdoğan is seeking 50,000 Turkish Liras in compensation, Reuters reported.

The move has been described as a "first of its kind" by the Union of Turkish Bar Associations (TBB) head Metin Feyzioğlu, who said the prime minister of Turkey had never before filed a lawsuit against the state.

"There is no precedent for the Prime Minister of the Turkish Republic to sue the Turkish Republic and demand compensation. This is happening for the first time," said Feyzioğlu.

He also described Erdoğan's application to the Constitutional Court as "unlawful," on the grounds that domestic remedies had not yet been exhausted.

Those domestic remedies include filing a lawsuit against Twitter, which naturally seems to be trying to avoid that: on April 14, its head of global public policy held talks with officials from the prime minister's office, the Communications Ministry and telecom authorities. The company has already made concessions, as this story from Agence France-Press indicates:

Twitter blocked two accounts on Sunday that had been used to spread corruption allegations against Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, his government and his inner circle.

The move came after high-level meetings between the government and executives from the company last week, and after the Turkish government provoked a storm in March by trying to ban the network entirely.

The two accounts blocked on Sunday -- @Haramzadeler333 and @Bascalan -- leaked large amounts of secret documents and recorded phone conversations implicating Erdogan, his family and associates in a wide-ranging corruption scandal.

It seems unlikely that blocking a couple of accounts will satisfy the Turkish prime minister -- it may even embolden him. Expect to see further interesting developments in this long-running struggle pitting a popular but increasingly-autocratic Erdoğan against his political opponents and supporters of freedom of speech.

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Filed Under: lawsuits, recep tayyip erdogan, turkey

Turkish Prime Minister Bans Twitter... Turkish People Turn Around And Ban The Ban

from the censorship dept

Over the last few weeks we've discussed a few times how Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan wanted to ban Twitter. If you don't follow the details of what's happening in Turkey, Zeynep Tufecki has a great backgrounder piece in the NY Times. Either way, the threats became reality, as Erdogan flat out announced his intent was to "eradicate Twitter" and also:

I don't care what the international community says. Everyone will witness the power of the Turkish Republic

Turkish ISPs followed the orders to block Twitter, but so far, it's not the power of the Turkish Republic we're seeing, but the power of people and technology to route around attempts at censorship. Many people quickly turned to VPNs or realized that they could still Tweet via text message... or that they could use alternative DNS providers. In fact, it's reached such a level that there's graffiti on the walls in Turkey pointing to Google's DNS which lets users route around the Twitter block:

Twitter is blocked in Turkey. On the streets of Istanbul, the action against censorship is graffiti DNS addresses. pic.twitter.com/XcsfN7lJvS

— Utku Can (@utku) March 21, 2014

And it appears that the people are winning so far, as Turkish Twitter users are still tweeting at quite a rapid rate.

As we had noted earlier, while the Prime Minister has been pushing this, Turkey's (less powerful) President, Abdullah Gul has been fighting back against these censorship attempts, and even went so far as to get around the ban himself to tweet against the ban and his tweet quickly was retweeted thousands of times.

Twitter itself is apparently looking into legal action to restore the site fully, but so far it seems that basic technology and the will of the people is beating out the "legal" process. As Tufecki has now noted, Erdogan may have banned Twitter in Turkey, but "people in Turkey had banned the ban."

Filed Under: abdullah gal, censorship, dns, recep erdogan, recep tayyip erdogan, turkey, vpns
Companies: twitter

Copyright As Censorship: Turkey's Prime Minister Copyrights His Recorded Calls To Get Them Off YouTube

from the copyright's-not-about-cenosrship? dept

Just recently, we noted that Turkish Prime Minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who has tried to shut down social media sites in the past, was once again threatening to ban YouTube and Facebook. The main issue: recordings of some of his phone calls were put online by those opposed to him. Erdogan has supported banning those sites by claiming that the recordings were "fabricated." Of course, it appears he's figured out there's a more modern and efficient way to censor content you don't want people to see: copyright.

Via Ankarali Jan comes the news that Erdogan has "taken out a copyright" in his own phone calls in an attempt to get them removed from those sites. Of course, that more or less admits that the calls are "real" -- though, as some have pointed out, he's never argued that the calls weren't his voice, just that they were edited inaccurately. Still, while more narrowly targeting the calls, rather than banning the whole site, may be seen as a slightly better path, the fact that his tool of choice is copyright should certainly remind us, once again, how frequently copyright is a tool for censorship, rather than having anything to do with its stated purpose.

Filed Under: copyright, erdogan, recep tayyip erdogan, turkey, youtube

Turkey's Political Leaders Reprise Roles In Spat Over Whether Or Not To Ban YouTube And Facebook

from the censorship-in-turkey,-part-II,-censor-harder dept

A few years ago, we wrote about attempts in Turkey to ban YouTube and some other social media sites under orders from Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan. We followed up some of those stories, in 2010, by noting that Turkey's President, Abdullah Gul, had spoken out against those bans and was looking for ways to end them. So, we had to check the dates on new articles, when we saw late last week that Prime Minister Erdogan was, once again, talking about plans to ban YouTube and Facebook:

The Turkish prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, said Facebook and YouTube could be banned following local elections in March after leaked tapes of an alleged phone call between him and his son went viral, prompting calls for his resignation.

Erdogan claims social media sites have been abused by his political enemies, in particular his former ally US-based Turkish Muslim cleric Fethullah Gulen, who, he says, is behind a stream of "fabricated" audio recordings posted on the internet purportedly revealing corruption in his inner circle.

"We are determined on this subject. We will not leave this nation at the mercy of YouTube and Facebook," Erdogan said in an interview late on Thursday with the Turkish broadcaster ATV. "We will take the necessary steps in the strongest way."

And, within a day, there was President Gul saying that such bans were not on the table:

“Things like YouTube and Facebook are accepted all around the world, and their closure cannot be of discussion,” Mr. Gul said Friday in televised remarks. “Reversing on liberties is out of the question in Turkey. We always feel proud of reforms that enhance freedoms; they will always proceed further.”

Of course, just last month, it was Gul who approved new censorship laws in Turkey. While he did get the new law amended to address some of the criticism, he still approved the final law, which has serious problems. Either way, it appears that internet censorship remains a very popular tool for insecure Turkish politicians.

Filed Under: abdullah gul, censorship, recep erdogan, social media, turkey, youtube
Companies: facebook, twitter, youtube

Turkey Passes New Net Censorship And Surveillance Laws; West No Longer In A Position To Criticize

from the awkward dept

Last week we discussed the Turkish government's bizarre campaign about the supposed "problems" of online freedom. Maybe this was an attempt to blunt criticism of its new online censorship law, which has just been passed by the Turkish parliament, as the Wall Street Journal reports:

The law, which must be approved by President Abdullah Gul to take effect, will allow the Presidency of Telecommunication and Communication, or TIB, to block access to Internet sites within four hours of receiving complaints about privacy violations. Turkey's web hosts will also have to store all traffic information for up to two years, according to the measure adopted as part of a legislative package.

That is, not only does it bring in harsh and swift online censorship, but requires online surveillance too. As the Guardian points out, this makes a bad situation worse:

Censorship and a very tight control of the internet are already a reality in Turkey. According to Engelliweb.com, around 40,500 websites were blocked in Turkey by the beginning of February -- 10,000 more than in April last year. The latest Freedom of the Net report published by Freedom House describes the Turkish internet as "partially free".

Despite that, Turkey's deputy prime minister, Bülent Arınç, is quoted as saying:

"We are freer and have more press freedom than many other countries in the world," he said.

The sad thing is, he may be right. Now that Western countries have lost the moral high ground when it comes to censoring Web sites and carrying out blanket surveillance, others plainly feel they have a free hand to bring in even more repressive laws clamping down on Internet freedom. Turkey's move is just the latest in a growing series.

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Filed Under: censorship, free speech, internet, turkey

Turkish Government Says Online Freedom Is Like Violence Against Women

from the I-don't-even dept

As anyone who has been following the news knows, Turkey has been going through a turbulent patch recently. It's also been trying to control dissenting voices online, as Techdirt has reported. So it comes as no surprise that it is bringing in even stricter censorship laws:

Amendments under debate in parliament to Turkish Law No. 5651, which governs all Internet content in the country, are the latest assault on freedom of expression in Turkey. The law was originally enacted in May 2007 to curb access to YouTube videos and online pornography, but the Turkish government regularly hides behind this law and others like it to filter or block content it disfavors, including advocacy for Kurdish rights. The independent press agency Bianet estimated that 110,000 websites were blocked in 2011 alone, while Google reported Turkish requests to remove content from the web rose nearly 1000% last year.

Proposed amendments to Law No. 5651 would provide for additional penalties on authors, content providers, and users of content it deems inappropriate with no effective means of redress.

What is surprising, though, is that alongside legislative changes, the Turkish government has also embarked on a bizarre advertising push:

The Turkish government started a new campaign against "too much freedom." Next to an image of a beaten woman is a line that translates "Violence is a crime. What about the Internet? Absence of rules does not mean liberty!", equating surfing the Internet freely and expressing opinions with using violence against someone.

This is Nicolas Sarkozy's "Internet as Wild West" trope pushed to extremes that even he would never have dared to explore.

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Filed Under: free speech, internet freedom, turkey

Turkish Government Aims To Create 6000-Strong Social Media Propaganda Squad

from the getting-the-message-out dept

In the recent demonstrations in Istanbul, the Turkish government may have had superior police and security forces on the streets, but one area where it lost the battle was on social networks, which anti-government protesters used adroitly to get their viewpoint out to the world. It seems the Turkish government has learned its lesson, and has decided to fight back according to this report in the Wall Street Journal:

The Justice and Development Party [AKP], led by Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, is recruiting a 6,000-member social-media team to woo citizens and fight critics, party officials said.

The AKP is gradually bringing young, tech-savvy party members to Ankara to train them in classrooms to act as volunteer "social-media representatives."

The youth will be charged with sharing news and images, mainly on Twitter and Facebook, but also on Instagram and YouTube, that promote the party perspective and monitor online discussions, a party official said.

The Turkish government certainly isn't the first to adopt this form of digital propaganda. China led the way with its "50-cent party", named for the amount of money that its members are allegedly paid every time they steer discussion back towards the official line. More recently, it has emerged that Israel will be paying university students to post pro-government messages online, but without identifying themselves as part of a propaganda team. Given the importance of social networks, and their ability to help shape political debates, it seems likely that this tactic will become increasingly common around the world.

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Filed Under: propaganda, social media, turkey

Turkish Police Shoot Down Surveillance Drone During Istanbul Protests

from the it-had-to-happen dept

As the growing number of Techdirt stories on the subject testify, drones are becoming a more familiar part of modern life. But their presence can add a new element to situations. An obvious example is during demonstrations, where drones can be used to monitor those taking part -- but also the authorities' reaction. As with cases where members of the public have used smartphones to capture police abuse, so drones offer the possibility of revealing questionable police activity that might in the past have gone unrecorded.

Given that potential to show the forces of law and order in an unflattering light, it was perhaps inevitable that the police would eventually take action against a drone that was monitoring them -- in this case, by shooting it down:

Tuesday afternoon on June 11th 2013, Police was violently attacking peaceful protestors. Police fired guns at one of our [remote control] drone during the protests in Taksim square, Istanbul. Police aimed directly at the camera. Due to the impact on the camera (it did have a housing) the last video was not saved properly on the SD card. The camera and drone were both broken. Managed to keep the SD card.

Here's a video of the take-down:

The drone's images before its violent end provide amazingly clear pictures of what is happening on the ground, and you can see why the authorities might not be very happy about that:

But as a Geek.com article on the incident points out, when you can soon buy a tiny $50 drone that streams straight to your smartphone for uploading to video sharing sites, the police may find themselves being monitored by tens or even hundreds of such devices during their actions against demonstrations, which makes shooting them all down problematic. Doubtless the authorities will come up with an answer to that (a squadron of police drones engaging in a dog-fight, perhaps?), but citizen drone users will then find a way around that -- perhaps flying small, hard-to-spot drones very high in the sky, and using high-quality cameras with zoom lenses. And so the drones arms race will continue.

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Filed Under: drones, reporting, turkey, witnessing

Crowdfunding Protests: Turkish Protesters Raise Over $100,000 To Buy NY Times Ad

from the what-a-world dept

There's been plenty of talk about how social media -- and specifically tools like Twitter and Facebook -- have been useful in organizing various protests around the world, but it's interesting to see how other popular tools are being used as well. For example, with the huge protests in Turkey, some of the protesters are using IndieGogo to finance a full-page ad in the NY Times to tell their story to the world. And it worked. Within a day, they'd raised the amount and it's continued to rise since then (and there are still weeks left). The NY Times has already accepted the ad as well. This strikes me as fascinating on a number of levels, because crowdfunding is just a different kind of platform -- and while most people just focus on its uses for buying products -- one of the key features is how it actually builds a community around the project in question. And, as such, you can see how it can also be such a powerful tool for building further community and support around a political campaign of sorts.

Filed Under: advertisement, crowdfunding, protests, turkey

Turkish Prime Minister Blames Twitter For Mass Social Unrest, Because It Sure Beats Blaming Himself

from the try-again-please dept

You may have heard a thing or two about the protests going on in Turkey. If you haven't, you really ought to read the news a bit more, because it's a pretty big deal. What started as a small protest swelled into a very big one, with much of the anger being directed at Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Erdogan's response? Blame Twitter.

"There is now a menace which is called Twitter," Erdogan said. "The best examples of lies can be found there. To me, social media is the worst menace to society."

If you wanted to demonstrate just how out of touch you are, and how in denial you are to complaints from the public, I'd have trouble thinking of a much better way to express it than those statements right there. It's certainly not going to stop the anger and the protests. No one is hanging out near Taksim Square hearing that, and saying, "oh, gee, I guess it's time to go home now."

Mocking the tool that people are using to communicate and to organize is a strategy that's never going to succeed, and can only serve to make things worse. It also makes clear how out of control the situation really is. When things are under control you don't make statements like that one, which simply demonstrate a Prime Minister in denial.

Filed Under: denial, recep tayyip erdogan, social media, turkey
Companies: twitter