Turkey Has Restored WordPress Access- Updated
20 August, 2007 — RickBWell done, the explanation is a bit wonky though-
the issue is about some government officer (military related) spreading some information. This critical situation led to a fast court order and the district attorney issued a written order to TTNet, the main Internet and ADSL service provider of Turkey. They had to obey this legal order but some inexperienced technical employee blocked the whole wordpress.com domain in the DNS servers which led to this mess. In a few minutes a techical middle manager realized the situation and took required action. Within a few hours the wordpress.com domain was available (except the problematic blog which is still being blocked due to legal orders). The inexperienced employee is about to leave the job.
This is the situation now, provided FYI.
(h/t Rafael)
UPDATE: Dan at Fitness for the Occasion has the lowdown on this story and a long comment from the blogger who’s blog is being censored. Looks like a white suited disco king Muslim creationist (apparently “Adnan Oktar strongly believes that he is the MAHDI (the Sunni and Shiite imitation of Messiah”) had his high price lawyers try and remove an article he doesn’t like. Follow the link for the really quite entertaining details, is it a sex cult to make money and fight science?
20 August, 2007 at 8:32 pm
But they are still blocking the “problematic blog”.
This is a step in the right direction, but still worrisome with regards to freedom of speech.
In essence, its just properly focused censorship instead of a wide-ranging net.
20 August, 2007 at 8:40 pm
Yes and I don’t have any info what it is they object to on that one blog (just a vague suggestion it was related to the military), getting that info out would be a good response to the censorship. Teach them when they do this it becomes a game of whackamole they can’t win.
20 August, 2007 at 9:30 pm
From what I’ve heard, it is the case of a fundamentalist making a ruckus with his lawyers.
20 August, 2007 at 9:45 pm
Holy cow! You’ve got the goods there, nice work.
20 August, 2007 at 10:47 pm
[...] signals are emerging from turkey, with some claiming that the ban is in effect while a few bloggers claim its been ordered to be lifted. Whatever may be the condition, I would like to show my support to [...]
26 August, 2007 at 4:32 pm
The above and unsubstantiated “wonky” statement (which links to the exact same thing on an open-source site saying the exact same thing except in Turkish!) was posted one day before the WordPress statement explaining the full story. Yes, it is the result of one controversial Islamic religious leader’s legal writ. Full story here: http://wordpress.com/blog/2007/08/19/why-were-blocked-in-turkey/
And as I am sitting on a hill over looking the Marmara Sea in the heart of Istanbul, Turkey, running IP rerouting software just so I can access this WordPress blog I can tell you, one week on, IT IS STILL BLOCKED! …As is Flickr Blog now.
As for wonky (read: wanky) statement: It’s a smokescreen.
MidEast Youth petition to unblock WP in Turkey:
http://www.mideastyouth.com/petitions/view_petition/PET13433106/Petition_to_Unblock_WordPress_in_Turkey.htm
Respect.
26 August, 2007 at 4:43 pm
Hello Jim, Thanks for the update, hmm the wonkiness exposed! If you look up to the right in my sidebar second banner down takes you too Hamed Saber’s plug in for firefox which gets round blocks on flickr. I did get a really stupid statement form the creationists lawyer (as well as rejecting science he rejects paying good translators apparently). I’ll do a new post and link to the petition.
17 September, 2007 at 6:34 pm
cool blog
19 December, 2007 at 6:44 pm
Oh, and did not know about it. Thanks for the information …