I had planned to write today's post about the comparative freedom in Turkey, especially in light of the revolts in the surrounding countries. I was going to write about the free debates we had in class after the recent death of Erkaban, the first Islamist Prime Minister. I was going to reassure everyone that Turkey is a well-consolidated democracy that has But as I tried to log on to write this entry, I found this message in red across the top of the page: Bu siteye erisim mahkeme karariyla engellenmistir. As you may know, I don't speak Turkish, but Google Translate helped me though. As it turns out, Turkey banned Blogspot as part of a court case by some TV company because people were streaming soccer matches onto their blogs. Clearly, the reasonable response was to shut down blogspot for the entire country...
But as I think about it, it's not out of Turkey's character. YouTube is also banned throughout the country (although not on campus, fortunately!) because of some anti-Ataturk videos posted by some Greeks. Again, a disproportionately severe response to a fairly minor grievance. Although Ataturk is still greatly revered here, I feel blocking an entire website is rather extreme.
All this is not to say that Turkey is at risk for any kind of revolution-- it's still a democratic country (elections are in June), and its citizens enjoy freedoms similar to those of Americans, at least for the most part. But the lengths that the Turkish government is willing to go is another story.
Obviously while this ban is in place, I will have a difficult time keeping up with the blog. I'll post updates as best I can through proxies, but email/Facebook me if you want more regular information.
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