NEW TURKISH INTERNET REGULATIONS SIGNAL FURTHER RESTRICTIONS ON FREEDOM OF SPEECH

The Jamestown Foundation
November 16, 2007 -- Volume 4, Issue 214
Gareth Jenkins

Supported by America? Turkish democracy in action? Anything is acceptable as long as you are a friend of America, but if it were China then it becomes repression!

Amid fading hopes of EU membership, there are increasing signs that the Turkish authorities are tightening restrictions on freedom of speech.

A new set of regulations for Internet Service Providers (ISPs) published in the Turkish Official Gazette on November 1, 2007, makes it compulsory for all commercial ISPs to take measures to prevent access to “illegal content” and use government-approved filters to block users from visiting undesirable websites. In addition, all commercial ISPs are now obliged to record details of all the websites visited by their subscribers and store the data for a period of at least one year.

The new regulations have caused outrage in the Turkish ISP community, which has described them as not only limiting freedom of expression but, also as a gross violation of privacy.

“Turkey is becoming a police state,” complained Mehmet Ali Koksal, a member of the board of Turkish Information Technology Association (TBD) (Milliyet, November 11).

But the new requirements have received little coverage in the mainstream Turkish media, with the result that few Turks are aware that they are now effectively under surveillance each time they access the Internet.

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Note: Above are excerpts from the article. The full article appears here. Clarifications and comments by me are contained in {}. Deletions are marked by [...]. The bold emphasis is mine.