On-again-off-again

It’s exactly a month ago today that youtube.com was again closed in Turkey. Previous closures usually didn’t last so long, and this time it’s even a ‘double closure’: when you try to open the site, you now get two notifications of court orders banning youtube. On the other hand, all the wordpressblogs are open again, after a ban lasting months and months and that made Turkish wordpress-bloggers move their sites elsewhere. Besides the closures by court order, there’s something else going on here online. That’s hacking. Of course that’s not limited to Turkey, but here it is used by groups of people to close down websites that in their eyes somehow ‘discredit’ Turkey and for example allegedly ‘supporting the PKK’. Both the judiciary and some groups of civilians just cannot accept the existence of different views. That problem is bigger than how it is shown online. Sometimes, people laugh a bit about the strange relationship between Turkey and youtube. But of course, it’s not funny at all. These on-again-off-again totally random closures of various websites are a serious violation of the freedom to express yourself.