Block of Wikipedia in Turkey

From 29 April 2017 to 15 January 2020, the online encyclopedia Wikipedia was blocked in Turkey. On 29 April 2017, Turkish authorities blocked online access to all its language editions throughout the country.[1][2] The restrictions were imposed by Turkish Law No. 5651,[3] due to the English version's article on state-sponsored terrorism (in the version of 29 April 2017), where Turkey was described as a sponsor country for the Islamic State and al-Qaeda. The Turkish Information and Communication Technologies Authority (ICTA) released a statement on its website that after technical analysis and legal consideration based on the Law Nr. 5651, measures have been taken for the website. [4] Requests by the ICTA to edit several articles to comply with Turkish law were not acted on.

Wikimedia Foundation Executive Director Katherine Maher said in May 2018 that the Foundation was "not sure why there is still a ban".<ref [5] In March 2018, Wikipedia's Facebook page started the "We Miss Turkey" campaign and replaced the black censor bar over the Wikipedia logo with a red one. It also had an accompanying hashtag of the same name. [6] On 15 January 2020, the block of Wikipedia in Turkey was lifted.<ref [7]<ref [8]<ref [9]

Background

Some countries have faulted Turkey for funding Islamist rebel groups in Syria, including al-Qaeda's affiliate in Syria, the al-Nusra Front. [10] In October 2014, U.S. Vice President Joe Biden said that Turkey, Saudi Arabia and the UAE had "poured hundreds of millions of dollars and tens of thousands of tons of weapons into anyone who would fight against Al-Assad". [11] The Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) threatened to withdraw from the operation to capture Raqqa if the United States did not take measures to stop Turkey's airstrikes against the group. [12] [13] 9,100 officers have been suspended. [14] On 29 April, 3,974 more civil servants were dismissed. Media outlets and reporters were heavily targeted; 190 news organizations were banned and at least 120 journalists were imprisoned.<ref Together with the ban of Wikipedia and television dating game shows, The New York Times described the moves as "an expand[ing] crackdown on dissent and free expression".<ref [15]

Legal context

Law No. 5651, known as the Internet Act (IA), was enacted on 4 May 2007.<ref [16] The purpose of this law was described by the now-defunct Presidency of Telecommunication and Communication as follows: "There are two reasons for the law to be brought. The first reason: to determine the liability and the responsibility of collective use providers, access providers, location providers, and content providers, which are the main actors of the Internet. The other reason is to determine the procedures and fundamentals related to the specific crimes committed over the Internet and fighting these through content, location and access providers."<ref [17] More recently, the law has been used to censor individuals, journalists and the media. [18] According to the 2018 Web Report of the Freedom of Expression Association (İfade Özgürlüğü Derneği) access to 245,826 websites was blocked in Turkey by the end of 2018, with access to a total of 54,904 websites and domain names blocked in 2018 alone. {[19] Reuters and the BBC reported that the Turkish authorities had blocked all access to Wikipedia in the country beginning at 5:00 AM GMT. Turkey's Information and Communication Technologies Authority simply stated: "After technical analysis and legal consideration based on the Law Nr. [sic] 5651 [governing the internet], an administrative measure has been taken for this website." {{[20] {{[21]

Rationale and demands

Voice of America reported that Turkish media had explained the block was a result of "terror-related content". {{[22]

After court objection by Istanbul Bilgi University professor Yaman Akdeniz, the Ankara 2nd Civil Court of Peace said that the causes of the block were the following articles on the English Wikipedia: {{[23]

According to a BBC report, the Hürriyet daily newspaper said that Ankara had asked Wikipedia to remove the offending content, adding that the access ban would be lifted if Wikipedia met Turkey's demands.<ref nam Later in the day, the provisional "administrative measure" was replaced by a court order, issued by the Ankara 1st Criminal Court of Peace, blocking Wikipedia as a "protective measure".<ref nam

According to a report by the Anadolu Agency, the country "has a history of demanding that international websites take such steps as having a representative office in the country, complying with principles of international law, implementing court rulings, and not being part of any smear campaign or operation in Turkey".<ref nam

On 3 May 2017, the Wikimedia Foundation submitted an objection to the block to Ankara's 1st Penal Court of Peace, {{C[24] The ruling stated that the country-wide block would continue as the "offending" pages had not been removed. The head of Turkey's Information and Communication Technologies Authority, Omer Fatih Sayan, explained: "It is not possible to open access to Wikipedia so long as the decisions are not implemented." {{c[25]

• Despite all the efforts, the content that falsely claims Turkey's support for terrorist organizations was not removed from Wikipedia.
• This content was not allowed to be edited with accurate information.
• Since Wikipedia broadcasts in HTTPS protocol, it is technically impossible to filter by individual URLs to block only relevant content.
• Therefore, the entire Wikipedia content had to be filtered.
• Wikipedia editors must do what is necessary for this and similar content.

Withdrawal of Jimmy Wales' invitation

On 2 May 2017, Istanbul Municipality removed Jimmy Wales, the founder of Wikipedia, from the guest list at the World Cities Expo event on smart cities to be held in the city from 15 to 18 May 2017, making the following announcement: "Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales was disinvited [ sic] from the 'World Cities Expo Event' and the decision has been communicated to him. Respectfully announced to the public."<ref nam[26] Wales had hoped to attend despite the Wikipedia block, commenting: "I am looking forward to the visit. Istanbul is one of my favorite cities." {{C[27]

Reactions

In Turkey, Republican People's Party (CHP) parliamentarians criticized the block, with Eren Erdem stating that the ban puts "Turkey in line with North Korea" and Barış Yarkadaş calling it "censorship and a violation of the right to access information".<ref nam {{C[28]<ref nam[29]<ref nam {{c[30]

On 9 January 2018, Republican People's Party deputy Sezgin Tanrıkulu submitted a written parliamentary question regarding the block of Wikipedia, saying that it was against the Turkish constitution and European Convention on Human Rights, and that "the block should be partial according to Turkish laws". Minister of transport, maritime and communication Ahmet Arslan denied that Wikipedia was blocked completely and stated that the Wikipedia block was just partial due to Article 22 of the Constitution of Turkey and Article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights. {{C[31]

Six months into the block, Wikimedia Foundation Communication Director Juliet Barbara published an article about the efforts to remove the access ban. {{c[32]

Muharrem İnce, CHP's presidential candidate for the 2018 Turkish presidential election, also vowed to reopen Wikipedia during one of his campaign speeches on 22 May 2018. {{Cite[33] This mirror site, nevertheless, omitted the "offending" sections that the Turkish authorities wanted removed from Wikipedia See [ht[34] and some features such as the left sidebar.

Activists also created a copy of Turkish Wikipedia on the InterPlanetary File System (IPFS)—a way of addressing web content which the Turkish government could not block due to its usage of decentralized open-source technology. {{cite [35] {{cite [36] and thus a domain name server (DNS) outside Turkey. An IP block exemption from Wikipedia was also required.

Litigation

Both the Wikimedia Foundation as well as some users (academics and activists Yaman Akdeniz and Kerem Altıparmak) of the platform challenged the blocking decision of the Ankara 1st Criminal Judgeship of Peace. All the appeals were rejected by the Ankara 2nd Criminal Judgeship of Peace. Therefore the initial blocking decision became final. {{cite [37] Following this, the Wikimedia Foundation as well as the academics Yaman Akdeniz and Kerem Altıparmak lodged separate individual applications with the Constitutional Court of Turkey. {{cite [38] {{cite [39] Later in August, the ECHR announced that it had given Turkey until the end of October to justify the ban. {{cite [40] A pro-government journalist later stated that the court had considered rescinding the ban. {{cite [41] On 25 November 2019, Dunja Mijatović, the European Commissioner for Human Rights, declared the blocking "unacceptable in a democratic society and not compatible with Article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights which protects freedom of expression". {{Cite [42] On 26 December 2019, the court ruled in a 10–6 vote that the block of Wikipedia violated the freedom of expression and ordered it to be lifted immediately.<ref name="H[43]<ref name="A[44]<ref name="c

The ICTA announced that they would open the site after the court's decision, however, Yaman Akdeniz, a law professor and one of the applicants in the Wikipedia case from Istanbul Bilgi University, said that a full opinion "most likely [needed] to be published" before the ban was lifted. {{cite [45] The Turkish government was expected to submit its written observations to the ECHR in January 2020. {{cite [46]

Restoration of access

After the Constitutional Court's decision in December 2019, overruling the initial ban, Turkish authorities granted users access to Wikipedia on late 15 January 2020 (Wikipedia's 19th birthday). The decision was officially announced on T.C. Resmî Gazete on the same day. This shows that during the block of 2.5 years, approximately 49,000 articles were created in Wikipedia either through different circumvention methods or by Turkish speakers who live elsewhere.

See also

• Censorship in Turkey
• Internet censorship in Turkey
• Turkey's media purge after the failed July 2016 coup d'état
• List of media outlets shut down in the 2016 Turkish purges
• List of arrested journalists in Turkey
• Internet censorship circumvention
• Block of Wikipedia in Venezuela

External links

• European Councils's Venice Commission's Opinion on Law No. 5651
• Wikimedia Foundation urges Turkish authorities to restore access to Wikipedia, Response by the Wikimedia Foundation (WMF)
• Response to 2017 ban in Turkey, Response by the Wikimedia community that complements the WMF response
• Project on Hindi Wikipedia where Wiki-contributions on Turkey were made showing solidarity with Turkish Wikipedians
• TurkceWikipedia.org – A "pirate" website mirroring Wikipedia's Turkish- and English-language content
• Revealed: The Four Articles That Got Wikipedia Banned in Turkey, article in Haaretz