For those Internet users based in Turkey wishing to access any WordPress (WP) blog a useful workaround has appeared. The mysterious and bilingual GreatFirewallofTurkey.com has set up a proxy service to enable WP visitors to bypass the block. All the visitor has to do is replace the word “press” with the word “prexy.” For example, “istanbuldespatch.wordpress.com” becomes “istanbuldespatch.wordprexy.com.” The only difference visually is that a “wordprexy” logo appears in the top right hand corner of the screen, linking to the Great Firewall site, where an explanation is at hand on what they’ve done:

“We like WordPress. We use WordPress. We support WordPress. We wouldn’t want to hurt the Automattic, Inc. guys, or their users and customers. And that is why we set up WordPrexy.com, because we don’t want WordPress to get hurt by our crooked legal system. If WordPress gets back online in Turkey, we’re out.”

With the last line saying it all for me, I’m confident that their intentions are in the right place. Their disclaimer explains the techy bit:

“WordPrexy is a WordPress-specific proxy server. It only mirrors the content; it does neither copy nor host any of the actual content found on WordPress.com. WordPrexy.com is not responsible from the material and content found in it’s sites and cannot be held liable for them.”

…and as they stress at the top of their page, “plagiarism is NOT what we do at WordPrexy.com.” So as an easier means of checking WP blogs in Turkey rather than firing up painfully slow and possibly illegal software, or the even more cumbersome finding of alternative IP addresses to punch into the preferences of your browser, I’d give it the thumbs up for its guerilla attitude and as a temporary solution.

There did appear to be a lot of angry debate below their explanation page on the sticking point of having AdSense ads on their site — which many disagreed with being present alongside the non-profit making clause of the Creative Commons license inherent in WP blogs — but with WP boss Matt weighing into the debate somewhere down the page, the Ads have since been removed.

I hasten to add though, for WP bloggers in Turkey, you cannot log in to the dashboard through this method. I’ve tried. (Which is probably best, my technical intuition tells me.) So its purely for reading and posting comments to a WP blog. That said, I have only one remaining nagging doubt. Does a comment posted to the “wordprexy” version appear on the “wordpress” version? I’m sure it does, but I’ll test it below anyway.

Any WP bloggers anywhere at odds with this method can contact the GFOT guys to have their specific blog removed from the “wordprexy” list. The contact link is on their explanation page, “What we are, and what we are not.”

Censorship appears to be rapidly increasing in Turkey as YouTube was blocked for the second time yesterday, reports MidEast Youth, just six months after a similar move by the Turkish courts. Back in March of this year, it was due to videos posted by Greek users posting videos deemed to have insulted the country’s founder, Atatürk. This time around, a single citizen from the eastern city of Sivas complained that the site was hosting videos that apparently insult both sides of the Turkish political divide — from recently elected President Abdullah Gül and Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, both of the Islamic-rooted AK Party, to, again, the Republic’s founder as well as the Turkish Armed Forces. All of these figures are protected by the Turkish Penal Code.

During the previous incident, the “insulting” videos were soon removed and YouTube became available to the Turkish public again. This time around YouTube have said in a written statement that they are “ready to cooperate with Turkish authorities to resolve the dispute,” according to the state-run Anatolia news agency.

“Cooperate? More like, get threatened into self-censorship,” comments MidEast Youth in their analysis, contrasting YouTube’s eagerness to please the authorities with the ongoing block of popular blog domain WordPress, who have refused to remove any content. The now one-month-old block of the world’s fourth largest blogging network — effectively censoring 20 thousand plus Turkish bloggers — stems from a private libel lawsuit by controversial Islamic creationist Adnan Oktar, often referred to as “Adnan Hodja” in countless Turkish headlines.

In a recent interview, the network’s 23-year-old founder, Matt Mullenweg, stated that he would “never limit Turkish bloggers’ freedom of speech.” The defiant stance has drawn praise from Western commentators posting on his personal blog, but Turkey-based bloggers have remained more critical in the absence of a legal challenge to the deadlock.

WordPress (WP) boss Matt Mullenweg has said in a recent interview that he would never limit the right of Turkish bloggers to express themselves. The show of defiance comes amidst the continuing “firestorm of criticism,” as Internet observers have described it, aimed at the ongoing block of WP on Turkish soil. In the interview, published online in Turkish on the Turkish Internet industry portal turk.internet.com, the 23-year-old WP founder developer estimates that there are some 20 to 30 thousand bloggers in Turkey affected by the ban. Turkish and expat bloggers, as well as their regular readers, have been greeted with the message that the entire WP site “has been suspended in accordance with [court] decision no: 2007/195,” since the private-but-monopoly Turk Telekom telephone company enforced the court order over two weeks ago. The controversial nationwide block — arriving in the wake of the ruling pro-EU and Islamic-rooted Justice and Development Party’s (AK Party) recent electoral successes, in both a general and presidential election — stems from a private “defamation” lawsuit brought by Islamic cult leader Adnan Oktar. The lawyers acting on behalf of the notorious “Adnan Hodja” — no stranger himself to Turkish press headlines often ranging from sex scandals to blackmail of famous figures — have inexplicably managed to get the Turkish legal system to block all WP blogs, instead of targeting the alleged few which slander their client.

An English translation* of the Matt Mullenweg interview on turk.internet.com, by Fusun S. Nebil (first published in Turkish on Aug. 28, 2007) appears below.

turk.internet.com.: Could you give us some brief information about WordPress?

Matt Mullenweg: WordPress.com has started to get a lot of attention recently. It gets 72 million visitors to its blogs every month. The number of page views it has per month is 300 million. Its content varies, everything ranging from CNN coverage of the American presidential election to humorous sites about cats, such as www.icanhascheezburger.com.

t.i.c.: We know you also have Turkish bloggers. Could you tell us about them?

M.M.: We’ve got 20 to 30 thousand Turkish bloggers. Before our site was blocked, we had 12 million page views per month for the Turkish blogs. At the moment, and if the block continues, we have 250 thousand views per month.

t.i.c.: What do you think of this block?

M.M.: I think it’s very sad. Maybe US laws are different from Turkish ones, but each WordPress.com blog has its own domain. For that reason, instead of the whole site they could’ve blocked the ones relating to that law. Now they have done this, thousands of innocent bloggers are silenced as well.

t.i.c.: Are you thinking of doing anything to challenge this?

M.M.: We aren’t thinking of what we are going to do, but what we are not going to do. We are never going to limit our Turkish bloggers’ freedom of speech.

t.i.c.: And one last question. What do you think on the future of Web 2.0?

M.M.: Blogs have just started becoming popular. Especially in European and Asian countries, where every month page views are doubling. I think no free person would deny the importance of blogs.

t.i.c. Note: WordPress.com continues to be blocked because the company has no lawyers or representatives in Turkey. Due to this, there are no plans to challenge the ban as there is no one to appeal against the court ruling.

* Translation by İstanbul Despatch

I’m sure you are all getting sick of these headlines, “(Insert Web site here) blocked in Turkey!” In fact, I’m even sicker writing them. But yes, this one’s true too. Although, to be more precise, the CNN Political Ticker blog, to be found on the CNN.com site — i.e., not the whole of CNN.com — is blocked in Turkey. The very same message that appears when visiting any WordPress (WP) blog, or the Yahoo-owned Flickr Blog as also recently reported, comes up for the Political Ticker: “Access to this site has been suspended in accordance with decision no: 2007/195 of T.C. Fatih 2.Civil Court of First Instance.” Which, of course, means it is the subject of the same private “defamation” court order enacted by one infamous Adnan Oktar.

Those familiar with the original WP blocked in Turkey story will know that the court order stems from the an attempt to close down a number of WP blogs “slandering” the controversial Islamic creationist. But, instead, the entire network of the fourth largest blogging platform in the world has been suspended on Turkish soil. So is there any slanderous/defaming/libellious material to be found when scouring CNN’s Political Ticker? Well, considering that the whole blog is decicated, more or less, to covering the US 2008 Presidential campaign you’d think you’d be hard-pushed to find something wouldn’t you? But not wanting to discredit the Turkish legal system’s objectivity outright without further investigation, I did a thorough “find on this page” word search for the words “Adnan” and “Oktar.” Not surprisingly my probe yielded no results. Still, with a cigarette-rolling-paper-thin hope that the Turkish legal system could not be that blind, I extended the probe to include the pen-name of the self-described (on his own Web site) “prominent Turkish intellectual,” who is “[c]ompletely devoted to moral values and dedicated to communicating the sacred values he cherishes to other people,” namely “Harun Yahya.” The thorough 30-second probe is now officially closed, and the paper-thin faith totally burnt. It seems that Hillary, Obama, Rudy and the rest of the US presidential hopefuls couldn’t find a single thing to say on the man on every Turkish WP blogger’s lips (often preceded by expletives).

Likewise, another similar search on the photo-sharing Flickr Blog on the two alternative names — or any combination thereof, as Oktar’s lawyers’ demanded from WP in their initial letter explaining why the WP network was now blocked — revealed, equally, not a single pic. (Viewers still keen to see his visage can easily check his own Web site — even in Turkey.)

However, there does seem to be apparent negligence on the part of both CNN Political Ticker and Flickr Blog. The evidence can clearly be found at the foot of the page: “Powered by WordPress.”*

Some enlightenment on the issue, perhaps, can be found on WP founder Matt Mullenweg’s personal site, Photo Matt. In his latest Turkey update, whereby the lawyers for Oktar seemingly rub the Internet community’s face in it (see “WordPress block: Oktar lawyers issue ‘threat’ to Internet“), one Turkish commenter wrote:

“Istanbul is [the] last stop for old judges before retirement. They’re all too old (to rock and roll and) to learn web technologies. They’re also too busy to research for [these] kind of ‘childish’ issues. That means, if someone requests a domain blocking to any Istanbul court, [the] judge (probably) thinks: ‘There may be [no] risk for society (or for my carr[e]er [in its] last minutes), let me block now, some other one [can] fix it anyhow’.”

EDITOR’S NOTE: Whilst it is apparent that the above piece appears quite mocking in tone, the author has reassured us of its authenticity. In fact, the source for the above (available in Turkey) can be reached here, on Photo Matt’s Turkey Update, whereby a commenter stated that the “CNN Political Blog” (sic) was also blocked. It was duly checked from within the borders of Turkey and found to be correct. The author, one Jim Colella, wishes it to be known that he is still capable of objective journalism, although the current and very apparent “ridiculousness of this affair,” as he put it, is making this noble aspect of his work increasingly difficult. He is currently seeking refuge in the WC — “one of the few outlets for expression not blocked in Turkey,” he said.

* For the real and technical explanation of why CNN and Flickr are also caught in the block on WP in Turkey, see Bulent’s very useful comments below this post. In short, their alias URLs are sub-domains on WordPress.com

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.”

Following in the wake of the nationwide WordPress (WP) block in Turkey, readers and writers alike from within the republic’s borders are being greeted by the same message when attempting to access blog.flickr.com: “Access to this site has been suspended in accordance with decision no: 2007/195 of T.C. Fatih 2.Civil Court of First Instance.”

Considering the exact same wording as those trying to access WP in Turkey, it would appear that the blog companion site to the well-known Yahoo-owned photo-sharing Flickr is also the subject of the same court order. As WP founding developer Matt Mullenweg recently revealed on the WP site, the WP block in Turkey is the result of a a private “defamation” case issued by controversial Turkish religious leader Adnan Oktar.

With the WordPress block in Turkey showing no signs of abating, the MidEast Youth project has launched a petition urging the Turkish authorities to reconsider their ban. The fourth largest blog site in the world boasting nearly 1.4 million blogs, with 12 million page views per month coming from Turkish readers alone, is currently the subject of a nationwide block due to a private “defamation” lawsuit by controversial religious leader Adnan Oktar.

With the recent landslide re-election of the Islamic-rooted Justice and Development Party (AK Party) highlighting their success at having passed sweeping EU accession inspired reforms over the last five years, the ban — whilst in keeping with Turkish legal norms — has outraged many in the Internet community and seemingly contradicts the government’s own pro-freedom of speech stance.

MidEast Youth, describing themselves as “a student-owned independent network dedicated to eliminate extremist ideologies and ignorance from the Middle East,” are now spearheading the fight to lift the block.

“Banning WordPress is a clear violation of free speech that effects the
citizens of Turkey, WordPress bloggers, and readers all over the world,” state the MidEast Youth project, adding,
“Certainly these disputes can be handled more judiciously by the Turkish
courts.”

Anyone wishing to add their signature to the petition can follow the link below. Free-to-distribute logos and banners promoting the cause are also available on the Mideast Youth site.

MidEast Youth “Petition to Unblock WordPress in Turkey”

NowPublic

Tags: Europe | Adnan Hoca | Adnan Oktar | AK Party | ANKARA | BAV | Blog | bloggers | Censorship | court | EU | freedom_of_speech | Harun Yahya | ISTANBUL | Politics | Turkey | TURKISH | WordPress

International finance and human rights lawyer and WordPress blogger Ali Eteraz has written a revealing and in-depth analysis of the Turkish legal system’s nationwide block on WordPress.com. The report titled “Shooting the messenger,” and posted on the UK daily Guardian Internet edition, details the rise of Adnan Oktar — pen-name Harun Yahya — the Islamic creationist behind the current block of the “million-blogger strong blogging platform” within the borders of Turkey.

As well as listing Adnan Oktar’s publications on “topics including refutations of atheism and Darwinism, romanticism as a weapon of Satan, anti-evolution pseudo-science, affirmation of miracles, and attacks on Freemasonry, Zionists, Buddhists, and terrorism (Darwin’s fault),” Eteraz draws attention to his 1996 book “Holocaust Lies” which claims that “what is presented as [the] Holocaust is the death of some Jews due to the
typhus plague during the war and the famine towards the end of the war caused by the defeat of the German[s].”

The root of the ban on WordPress in Turkey, according to Eteraz, is attributed to blogs hosted on the platform by Oktar’s “political enemy” and former mentor Edsip Yuksel.

“A fuller picture about the WordPress ban thus starts to emerge,” writes Eteraz, adding: “WordPress is caught up in a long-standing political and cultural battle between two competing Muslim groups. The ban, therefore, reveals little about slander, or defamation, and I am uncertain how effective blog-protests will be (though it is an intriguing idea to try to force the hands of Turkish courts).”

Pointing to the Islamic roots of the Justice and Development Party (AK Party) government, “which came to power by attacking secularist Turks for their anti-free speech views,” Eteraz says the ruling party “is now enabling [the] silencing of speech itself.”

In his conclusion, the human rights lawyer asks pertinent questions: “What does this say about the promises that Islamist parties make before actually acquiring power? How does this bode for Islamist democrats in
other parts of the Muslim world? What does it reveal about the Islamist promise in general? It will be important, and instructive, to watch what happens with this case going forward. I would hope that the
Islamists will recognise the principles of openness and freedom of speech that brought them to power, and get rid of this ban.”

With WordPress still blocked in Turkey, WordPress founding developer Matthew Mullenweg has received a letter from the person claiming to be responsible for the block and posted it on his own WP blog. The thrust
of the somewhat absurd issue is that lawyers, acting on behalf of one Adnan Oktar, have applied to the courts to have the internationally well-known free blog site blocked in Turkey on the grounds of “defamation” of their client. Adnan Oktar is an Islamic creationist, also a subject of prosecution in the Turkish legal system, as well as much controversy for his published views railing against Darwinism, Semitism and Buddhism among other established belief systems. You can follow the reponse to Matt’s publication of the letter by clicking here.

Just months after blocking youTube — drawing international attention, not to mention condemnation from some quarters — the Turkish authorities have blocked all access to WordPress.com to viewers and bloggers alike. Although the youTube incident was briefly resolved after “offending videos” posted by Greek users “insulting the memory of Atatürk” were removed, it is completely unknown why the global and free blog site has been blocked by the Turkish state. Moreover, with the ruling Justice and Development Party (AK Party) recent lanslide re-election on July 22 and their raft of pro-European Union accession reforms in recent years, the clampdown on a major international platform for freedom of speech appears totally out of step with their philosophy, not to mention their renewed electoral mandate based on the performance over the last five years. Anybody now trying to access WordPress from within the borders of the Republic of Turkey are greeted with the message, “Access to this site has been suspended in accordance with decision no: 2007/195 of T.C. Fatih 2.Civil Court of First Instance.” Although Internet-savvy bloggers and readers alike can still gain (somewhat cumbersome access) through various software or reconfiguring their proxy servers, the move strikes at the very heart of freedom of speech from a country supposedly on the road to EU membership. This can only add to the controversy of the infamous Article 301 remaining on the statute books. In recent years numerous intellectuals and writers, such as 2006 Nobel Laureate Orhan Pamuk, assassinated Turkish-Armenian journalist Hrant Dink and novelist Elif Şafak have all been tried under the auspices of Article 301 of the Turkish Penal Code for “insulting Turkishness.”