Déjà vu: YouTube blocked in Turkey again

ISTANBUL:   Censorship appears to be rapidly increasing in Turkey as YouTube was blocked for the second time yesterday, reports MidEast Youth, just six months after a similar move by the Turkish courts. Back in March of this year, it was due to videos posted by Greek users posting videos deemed to have insulted the country's founder, Atatürk. This time around, a single citizen from the eastern city of Sivas complained that the site was hosting videos that apparently insult both sides of the Turkish political divide -- from recently elected President Abdullah Gül and Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, both of the Islamic-rooted AK Party, to, again, the Republic's founder as well as the Turkish Armed Forces. All of these figures are protected by the Turkish Penal Code.

During the previous incident, the "insulting" videos were soon removed and YouTube became available to the Turkish public again. This time around YouTube have said in a written statement that they are "ready to cooperate with Turkish authorities to resolve the dispute," according to the state-run Anatolia news agency.

"Cooperate? More like, get threatened into self-censorship," comments MidEast Youth in their analysis, contrasting YouTube's eagerness to please the authorities with the ongoing block of popular blog domain WordPress, who have refused to remove any content. The now one-month-old block of the world's fourth largest blogging network -- effectively censoring 20 thousand plus Turkish bloggers -- stems from a private libel lawsuit by controversial Islamic creationist Adnan Oktar, often referred to as "Adnan Hodja" in countless Turkish headlines.

In a recent interview, the network's 23-year-old founder, Matt Mullenweg, stated that he would "never limit Turkish bloggers' freedom of speech." The defiant stance has drawn praise from Western commentators posting on his personal blog, but Turkey-based bloggers have remained more critical in the absence of a legal challenge to the deadlock.