Oktar Lawyers Issue ‘Threat’

In the latest twist to the ongoing saga of the nationwide block of WordPress.com in Turkey, WordPress (WP) founder Matt Mullenweg has published highlights from latest statements made by the lawyers who initiated the ban. The parts of the “press release” posted on Mullenweg’s own blog on Aug. 25, and issued by the lawyers representing controversial Islamic creationist Adnan Oktar — the man behind the ban on claims of slanderous blogs on WP — appear to go beyond the normal rhetoric of the legal world in justifying their actions on behalf of their client, not to mention being poorly worded in English.

The first posted snippet reads: “As it is known by public, the entry of the publications to Turkey of the blog service named ‘woldpress.com’ that gives the opportunity of opening free site to internet users is interrupted with the judgement. This judgement is applied on 17.8.2007 and thus the entery of worldpress.com service and the publications of all sub-sites which takes service from this service to Turkey is interrupted.”

Mullenweg retorts just below with a comment that “They seem proud that they blocked all the sites instead of just the ones that they consider illegal under Turkish law.”

After a further — and barely understandable — highlight from the press release that seems to refer to WP “ignoring the judgements that are given by the Turkish courts,” Mullenweg writes that as far as he knew WP “never received any notice from Turkish courts about anything, only barely coherent threats and bully-attempts written much like the above.”

The press release then goes on in the same vein, detailing its progress in trying to get WP to listen before the block was issued by the Turkish courts.

Clarifying the difficult-to-read snippet, Mullenweg then writes, “when they said they contacted us 17 times, that means that they would blast the same email to multiple address and when they didn’t get the reply they wanted they sent the same message over and over again.”

The WP founder goes on to reveal that the “main request” from Adnan Oktar’s lawyers “was that we block the name of their client being used by any blog hosted by our site, much like you can’t write ‘democracy’ on blogs hosted by MSN Spaces in China.”

Matt Mullenweg then discloses what he describes as the “threat at the end” of the press release from Oktar’s lawyers:

“There is a lesson which all blog services and internet service providers should take from this judgement. Blog services, especially the ones that give free service, should be careful about the sites that are illegally active through their firms. These services should not remain insensitive to the complints that they receive and especially to the judgements. It is certain that the services which behave opppositely will meet with the same enforcement that WordPress met.”

Referring to the lawyers’ previous demands in the affair to have all blogs containing their client’s name removed, Matt concludes: “So if you don’t disallow certain words being used on your blogs, you’ll be punitively punished through our state-controlled ISP. Today those words are ‘Adnan Oktar.’ Who knows what they’ll be tomorrow.”