The board of the Telecom authorities has announced that it has closed down 1,112 websites in Turkey since November 2007. No, that’s not a typing mistake: one thousand one hundred and twelve websites have been closed down. These are mostly sites that offer for example pornography or illegal gambling, but sites that (allegedly) support terrorism or separatism are also being …
Earlier this year, my colleagues were protesting new social security laws. At the time, a big package of changes for working people, for pregnant workers and for pensioners was announced by the government. Journalists in Turkey found it necessary to protest a change that would directly affect them: the special rules that gave them the possibility to retire earlier than …
When I check my mailbox, there are at least 278 offers in it to interview Mr. Adnan Oktar, a ‘prominent Muslim scholar’ who is mainly known as a Muslim creationist. Okay, I’m exaggerating a bit, there aren’t that many, but Adnan Oktar is exaggerating too: according to the information I got from his PR lady, he has written over 250 …
‘Don’t be rude, and get out of my way!’, Recep Tayyip Erdogan shouted at a group of photojournalists. The Prime Minister is not at his best these days. Not surprisingly, because one crisis has hardly ended (like the closure case against his AKP party, which turned out positively for him), when another crisis begins: the AKP is deeply entangled in …
Freedom of the press? I don’t think that’s really the issue these days. There’s a sort of war going on between Dogan, owner of the biggest media-group, and Prime Minister Erdogan. Dogan papers (which are all the big ones, like Sabah, Hürriyet, Radikal, and many more) have devoted a lot of space recently to a corruption scandal at Deniz Feneri,
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No no no, the youtube ban has not been lifted. Newspapers all over the world announced this on Tuesday, and I was embarrassed about missing it. How can I check almost every day and still not notice, what’s wrong with me? I read about how some parts of the country are taking longer to reconnect - something that I totally …
I was the guest of a Turkish family for a few days. The mother of the family sometimes likes to watch Roj TV, the Kurdish channel that broadcasts from Denmark and has for ages been a pain in the ass for Turkish citizens and the government, which labels it as a PKK propaganda channel. The mother watches …
Three newspapers, three headlines. Cumhuriyet, strong defender of the secular republic, says: “Fine for AKP” – and they write that this proves the Constitutional Court considers the AKP to really be a focal point of anti-secular activities. Zaman, religious and pro-AKP: “Closure rejected” – and on the bottom of the page a picture of a smiling and …
Always something unexpected, that’s a good description of political developments in Turkey. At the beginning of the week, it seemed that the closure case against the ruling AK Party would be dominating the news, but it turned out totally differently: on Tuesday more then twenty people were arrested for suspected links with the Ergenekon gang, a shady …
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 …
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