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Archive for the ‘Defamation’ Category

ADD moves to ban Google sites for defaming Atatürk

13 April 2009, Monday, TODAY’S ZAMAN WITH WIRES, İSTANBUL

The Atatürkist Thought Association (ADD) has moved to block access to Google Sites due to content it deems insulting to Atatürk, the founder of Turkey, and the concept of Turkishness.

The association recently applied to the Ankara Public Prosecutor’s Office to ban Google Sites, saying several pages affiliated with the famous search engine insult Atatürk and the concept of Turkishness. It is illegal in Turkey to insult Atatürk, a revered figure whose portrait still hangs in nearly all government offices almost 70 years after his death in 1938.

A petition submitted by the neo-nationalist association to the prosecutor’s office read that the owners or founders of the Web sites in question were not found, adding a notice on the bottom of the sites indicated that they were powered by Google Sites. ‘For this reason, we request that an investigation be launched into the issue and necessary precautions be taken,’ the petition read.

Turkey has become the focus of harsh criticism due to an increasing number of Web sites blocked by the government. Web sites in Turkey are most often banned on the grounds that they insult Atatürk, contain vulgarity, enable gambling or promote suicide.

Many sites have also been banned for crimes covered under the Internet Security Law, but a number of sites are banned for no apparent reason. Among the Web sites frequently banned in the country is the popular video-sharing portal YouTube, which was first banned by a controversial court decision in May 2008 for broadcasting videos deemed insulting to Atatürk and the concept of Turkishness. Though the ban was lifted several times, access to YouTube was blocked over and over again by different Turkish courts for the very same reason.

In the meantime, Berivan Zeren — a female teacher at İstanbul’s Kadriye Moroğlu High School — was fired by the superintendent of the school due to ‘her hostile acts against the memory of Atatürk.’

According to a report published by the Taraf daily yesterday, Zeren distributed course-related documents to her students on democracy and human rights. A section of the documents was set aside for Atatürk and said all acts in the school needn’t be supported by a saying of Atatürk. A group of Zeren’s colleagues took the documents to the superintendent and complained that she was engaging in anti-Atatürk acts.

Zeren was fired by the superintendent, Abdülselam Demir, on March 13.

Index on Censorship: ‘There are more people working on censoring the Internet than developing it’

Yigal Schleifer is a correspondent for the Christian Science Monitor

The successes of Harun Yahya show just how easy it is to shut down web discussion in Turkey, writes Yigal Schleifer

Turkish Internet users woke up on 24 October to find that access to Blogger, the popular blog-hosting site owned by Google, had been blocked by a court order, because of illegal material (streams of football games) found on a handful of blogs.

The ban on Blogger — provisionally lifted after five days — came without warning, but few were surprised by it. In the last two years, Turkey has become increasingly involved in controlling what its citizens can access online. So far in the last year, access to more than 850 websites has been blocked by the Turkish state, either through court order or government action. YouTube, the popular video sharing site, has been banned since last May, after amateurish clips mocking Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, modern Turkey’s founder, were posted on it. WordPress, another major blog-hosting site, was blocked for more than a year and the website of Oxford evolutionist Richard Dawkins is currently off limits to Turkish Internet users.

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[Blog entry by Yaman Akdeniz] Interesting story developing in Turkey right now. If you would recall Adnan Oktar (Adnan Hodja) is the Turkish creationist who is behind almost 61 blocking orders issued by the courts in Turkey to popular websites including wordpress.com, richarddawkins.net, egitimsen.org.tr, groups.google and gazetevatan.com.

As you will read below, this time he threatened to take legal action against Bianet, an independent progressive media site which published an article (in Turkish) that was drafted by myself and Kerem Altiparmak. We basically argued in the article that with regards to private law matters such as claims for defamation, and privacy invasions, the notice & takedown, and right to reply provisions of article 9 of Law No. 5651 should be followed. We explained in the article that unlike article 8 of Law No. 5651 (which is used for blocking access to websites in Turkey), article 9 does not contain “blocking” measures. The Turkish Parliament decided to provide the “blocking measures” with regards to the catalogue crimes listed in article 8 only. Therefore, since the Law No. 5651 came into force, and based on the lex specialis derogat generali doctrine, it is unlawful for the courts, or public prosecutors which are empowered to decide on claims with regards to private law matters to issue “blocking orders” or precautionary injunctions. Currently, the specific governing law is Law No. 5651 and article 9 provisions are not overridden by laws which govern general matters within the Turkish law.

Furthermore, article 8 and article 9 provisions are clearly distinct from each other. While article 8 regulates serious content crimes committed on websites located both in and outside the Turkish jurisdiction, and provides blocking measures, article 9 regulates private law disputes between individuals and involves notice & takedown and right to reply provisions. The exclusion of blocking measures from article 9 shows that the main concern of the legislators was the tackling of the serious crimes listed in article 8 and blocking is not provided as a preventative measure for the less serious private law disputes.

Going back to the legal threat, obviously we have not “defamed” anyone including Oktar in the article. His lawyers are not happy about the views put forward including the criticism of the courts who have been issuing the blocking orders. They therefore thought it is best to get rid of our “views” completely. However, Bianet, which should be applauded for taking the risk of being blocked and taken to the court in Turkey stands by the decision to publish the article at http://www.bianet.org/bianet/kategori/bianet/110319/internete-karsi-adnan-hoca-tum-kapatmalar-hukuka-aykiri

The threats are not substantiated and will not lead into the article being removed from Bianet’s website nor from privacy.cyber-rights.org.tr. Currently thanks to the anti-censorship movement SansureSansur’s the article is being spread on a considerable number of Turkish blogs like a virus!

A detailed assessment of the Turkish approaches to Internet content regulation will be provided in an 80 page long report entitled Restricted Access: A Critical Assessment of Internet Content Regulation and Censorship in Turkey written by Dr. Yaman Akdeniz and Dr. Kerem Altiparmak. This bi-lingual (English/Turkish) report will be published during November 2008 and will be made available as a PDF file through cyberlaw.org.uk and cyber-rights.org.tr pages.

Bianet: We Will Not Give In To Adnan Oktar’s Threats!

Adnan Oktar, the name behind the closing of many internet sites in Turkey, threatens bianet: ‘There is an insulting article, take it off the internet or we will have you banned like Richard Dawkin’s site.’ There is no insult, so we are not taking it off!

Bia news center – İstanbul, 29-10-2008

Adnan Oktar, the name behind the closing of most of the internet sites in Turkey, has threatened bianet, too.

Claiming he was insulted and slandered through an article criticizing the internet bannings from the legal perspective, which appeared in bianet.org, Adnan Oktar (Adnan Hodja) announced that he was planning to go to court if the said article was not taken off the site.

Giving bianet a warning yesterday on behalf of their clients, Oktar’s lawyers reminded that they had managed to get sites such as wordpress.com, richarddawkins.net, egitimsen.org.tr, groups.google and gazetevatan.com banned previously.

Lawyers Kerim Kalkan and Ceyhun Aydoğan stated in the warning they sent to bianet that they were planning to go to court if the said article was not removed within 24 hours.

Meeting with lawyers about the problem, the bianet administration decided not to take off the said article, since it did not include any insult.

Oktar mistook the critique intended for the court
The article that Oktar thought insulting him was written by Yaman Akdeniz, a faculty from the Law Department of the University of Leeds, and Kerem Altıparmak, a member of the Human Right Center of the Political Science Department of Ankara University, and published by bianet on October 20.

Reminding that up until today 61 sites have been banned by the court orders taken from Silivri and Gebze courts, both Akdeniz and Altıparmak state that the sites were being banned because of a problem in courts’ interpretation methods.

The courts pass over ‘the Law 5651 for the Regulation of the Material in the Internet and the Fight against the Crimes Committed by this Material’ and apply instead the regulations regarding insulting others.

However, the courts should really apply the Law 5651 designed for these matters and this law does not include an arrangements leading to the banning of a site.

Akdeniz and Altıparmak also draw attention to the fact that the banned sites are never given the chance to defend themselves and usually do not know the reasons for their banning.

Oktar’s lawyer Aydoğan did not reply to bianet’s demand that they should give concrete examples regarding their insult allegation.
Oktar is not the only one asking for censorship

In addition to the ones demanded by Oktar, so far the Turkish courts have banned many sites, including sites like YouTube, EksiSözlük, Daily Motion, blogger.com and geocities.com.

Freedem of Expression defenders, academicians, jurist, journalists and internet users, both from Turkey and the international arena, have reacted to the bannings. (EÜ/TB)