Thanks wholeheartedly for clearing that up! I mean it. It only become more of a mystery to me as time went by and, as you so correctly write, the Turkish (and elsewhere) mainstream press took little/no note. To be honest, I only pieced together the timeline aspect of it as I was writing back to Nihat there, which increased my skepticism alongside the hindsight view of “where’s the rest of the press?” on this story… A very hot story too, IMO!… but I reckon they’ll catch up eventually. It has all the potential… as long as there’s enough of us making noises down here in the blogosphere.

Also, such is the nature of the wonderful Web 2.0 comment facility, my angle rose spontaneously out of a personal rant. Yes, I was cynical. A little less so now, thanks to you. The best thing about posting “news” this way is that you find yourself moderating your own view as feedback comes through, and healthy debate springs out of it. Way back at the beginning, when I saw your dpa piece, I was a little tempted to build a story out of it but soon realised that it smacked more of subjective paranoia on my part, rather than objective citizen-based journalism, which is my purpose here. Hence, I never put anything together on it. And there were far more (and still are) important aspects to focus on. Like I wrote in the middle of all that, “Maybe I’m being paranoid… been in Turkey too long etc.”, obviously that was the case in light of your detailed timeline. (The “etc” was to stop myself typing “deep state”!)

So apologies for any offence caused. I too am trying to stay objective and admire your stance for that reason. I think I’m achieving that with the “news” posts. It’s in the comments and the ongoing dialogue that I let myself go in the context of the debate… as I said, such is the nature of the comment box! And, on the context tip, it’s also quite a toughie remaing neutral being one of the 20-30 thousand innocents caught up in this block (i.e., changing proxies, DNS etc. just to access my own blog).

As for the headline business: Point totally taken. As I wrote to Nihat, I worked for a newspaper here in Turkey, so I am fully aware of the necessity of the wires remaining neutral. All I can say is I compliment you on spotting the value of the story so soon and getting it out so far ahead of the game… If only the mainstream where so quick and on it!

By the way, it would be useful for future reports to know which German newspapers have picked up on this. Can you provide any links? I’ll be sure to include it somewhere along the line. I’ve only been monitoring the English and Turkish press (with serious help from my wife on the latter). My German is next to nothing, but I’ll certainly reference any press on this to keep the ball rolling for the sake of grabbing attention.

Oh, and apologies for taking so long to approve your comment (I saw your other comments on that, of course). I was away from my desk, so to speak, for a couple of days.

Thanks for dropping by. I’m still amazed at the quality of commentary and discussion that is springing up here. I’m certainly going to pay your blog a visit. Keep in touch.

Respect

Timeline wise.
I was first alerted to the block on Mon. Aug. 20 thanks to a forum for expats in Turkey. Messages were going left right and centre, none of which made sense. I then used a proxy to get to the wordpress blog concerning the issue where I saw the letter sent to Matt by Kerim Kalkan.

After reading all 70-odd comments. I went back to the original letter sent to Matt by Kalkan and saw that it had Kalkan’s telephone number. Bingo, all I had to do was ring the bloke up and asked him for the dates of the block. ie that the court had ordered the whole domain be blocked on August 13 and it was implemented on August 17.

So this was about 4:30 pm (Turkish time) Monday afternoon. I filed my story at about 5:30 pm and it went straight out onto the wires. Remember we are a wire service and our stuff goes “live” pretty much as soon as we file.
The Monsters and Critics website (a subscriber to the dpa English service) had it on their site not much later. A few newspapers around the world picked it up (I was surprised at how few, I truly thought this was a big big story). I wrote the story in English and it was also sent out in German and it was apparently picked up by quite a few German papers.

The story has also popped up on a few blogs, such as yours.

As for why you could not find it on the dpa site, we only sell our service, we do not put stuff up on the net.

It was a few days later that Kalkan issued a formal press statement.

As for the criticism of the headline… yeah. I get your point but we are a wire service and we can’t really go for sensational headlines. The same goes for the rest of the piece, we have to try and be neutral with our news stories.

As a blogger myself, on blogspot, I had hoped that the story might have at least got the ball rolling and subsequently be followed up extensively in the Turkish press. It hasn’t though.

I have also attempted to stay neutral on the whole matter as I believe it is really the job of the Turkish press, Turkish bloggers and readers to get this changed. I just reported the facts.

By the way, enjoying the discussion here.
Cheers

Also, at photomatt.net, a gentleman named Daniel insists on lecturing me on the principles of freedoms, who should fight where, etc. Have I anywhere sounded off as though I believe that Matt is obligated to engage in a legal battle in Turkey? Or, that he is the prime responsible party in this outcome? I am asking here because Daniel says he read my comments here, and continues his lecturing thus.

Re: Spin/damage limitation

Your commentary on the press coverage of this issue is interesting to say the least. I hadn’t looked at the events in such a detective-like fashion. I probably wouldn’t have asked any questions you’re asking here even if I had seen the detailed German press coverage early on vis-a-vis the still sleeping Turkish & foreign press. I am somewhat prejudiced about the Turkish press: they would sometimes pick up stories relating to Turkish affairs after the Western press covers them sufficiently. If the Western coverage is disparaging or ill-informed, that helps tremendously in getting their attention. But by then it’s too late for an informed discussion of the actual issue in the Turkish media; now, we’ve gotta refute the Western coverage, how biased they always are, etc.

Re: France vs. Yahoo

… and that case’s similarities to the present Turkey vs. WordPress case (which admittedly didn’t unfold as such), I didn’t mean to suggest similarities to be one-to-one. But it goes without saying that WordPress would have taken this case more seriously had they had some physical presence in Turkey.

I am with you re: saying ‘no’ to criminalizing expression of certain thoughts and ideas, unless maybe these thoughts are along the lines of “death to infidels” or some such call for committing crimes.

Your insight about Edip Yuksel material is duly noted, too. Especially the point that most things that he could have possibly written to offend Oktar have presumably appeared also in mainstream Turkish media outlets. Not only is this probably true, but it adds to the mystery surrounding this ban as well. I am becoming more convinced by the day that the Fatih court was not enlightened to all aspects of the issue (not only re: the Net-related considerations, range of technical measures, etc., but also re: the libel-or-not deliberations). Repeating one of my earlier questions: was there ‘any’ defense in that court during the hearings?