Turkish government has the right to ban websites found hosting "scandalous" content such as criticism of Mustafa Ataturk, the nation's first president. (Photo : Reuters)
The Turkish government has decided to officially block Reddit access in the country. Users reported that they lost access to Reddit starting over the weekend, but eventually, the government retracted the ban the access for the website.
Under Internet Law 5651, the Turkish Supreme Council for Telecommunications and IT (TIB) has the right to ban websites found hosting "scandalous" content, including piracy, drugs, adult material, or criticism of Mustafa Ataturk, the nation's first president.
An official government site, as cited by The Verge, released a statement on Nov. 13 saying, "After technical analysis and legal consideration ... administration measure has been taken for this website."
The TIB does not need the authorization from court to block sites on the above-mentioned grounds. In addition, even if there is only a suspicion such scandalous activity, TIB will automatically block the popular social media sites. The government intensified its Internet censorship laws in 2014, causing people of Istanbul and Ankara to take to the streets in protest.
The Turkish government has greatly increased its attempts to censor major websites and social platforms, including Twitter, YouTube, and Facebook. Country’s courts eventually reversed the social media bans, but the government threatened to block them again over content posted by users, and it appears that they will continue attempting to censor the internet from the Turkish citizens.
There was no exact reason given by the Turkish government for banning Reddit, and apparently, the ban has now been retracted with no reason given as well. It is unclear whether the ban was related to a particular piece of objectionable content or if Turkey simply wanted to make Reddit in its entirety unavailable.
Users have reportedly said Reddit is banned at the DNS-level computers use to transform web addresses into IP addresses, which in return are required to direct traffic to the right places. Meaning, a user can try to evade the ban by using a foreign DNS service, International Business Times reported.
