I am very upset that blogger.com was banned in Turkey. First they banned youtube.com a few months before and now this. I find it a bit scary and quite violating that they choose to censor the whole country and has gone into parts of Georgia. And they don't even do that great of a job because there are tons of loophole sites to get you on to youtube and blogger eventually with a little work such as www.dtunnel.com. Although these are annoying because you get tons of pop up adds and I can't post pictures argggg! Initially the story was that it was a Muslim creationism fanatic named Adnan Oktur that caused the ban since he had temporarily gotten wordpress.com banned earlier. But now the story is that the ban was caused by digiturk, the largest cable provider in Turkey who was upset because some blogs hosted by blogger were showing football(soccer) games that they had the rights too. Are you freaking kidding me????? Tons of people loose their freedom of speech over a freaking football match and I guess some money of course, there's always the money. It just pisses me off and is doing nothing for Turkey's reputation- CENSORSHIP. So many Turkish people tell me that their hopes for Turkey is to be "modern". I always wonder what exactly they mean by that? This is not modern thinking...Who ever imposed this ban did not consider the many, many people it would effect. Also this happened in a country that has whole stores devoted to pirated dvds, literally! I almost wish it was for a better reason(what if it is???) Also the current ban on youtube.com is because some person published a video portraying Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, Modern Turkey's father(who they have made in to somewhat of a deity) in a poor way so they decided to ban a whole huge file sharing site full of information. what the heck? In turkey it is a crime to insult Turkishness...what exactly that means is a bit vague. The world has a love/hate relationship with America but we have our freedom to talk about other counries, ourselves, our president, everything for now at least...Shoot I was just reminded of the PATRIOT ACT, our giant leap backwards. Americans and the world constantly make fun of president Bush and nothing is banned- no one is censored yet. America we need to hold on to this huge pedestal of our country. I never really realized how much I respect the bill of rights and the freedom of speech in America until living abroad. Criticism is a part of life and should be embraced instead of banned!
I love Turkey. My blog has never said anything against it therefore should not be punished. This is very, very
frustrating. Here are a few related links...
http://www.basbasbas.com
Also just use our friend google(who owns blogger) to search out the topic...
blogger.com ban in Turkey
and
youtube.com ban in Turkey
What will be next?
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