ISTANBUL – From communist works to a comic book, thousands of titles banned by Turkey over the decades were taken off the restricted list Saturday, thanks to a government reform.
In July, the parliament adopted a bill stipulating that any decision taken before 2012 to block the sale and distribution of published work would be voided if no court chose to confirm the ruling within six months.
The deadline came and went Saturday and no such judicial decisions were recorded, the head of Turkey’s TYB publisher’s union, Metin Celal Zeynioglu, said.
“All bans ordered by (the courts in the capital) Ankara will be lifted on Jan. 5,” city prosecutor Kursat Kayral confirmed.
Kayral had announced last month that he would let lapse every ban in his jurisdiction, a decision that cleared 453 books and 645 periodicals in that area alone.
Among them were several communist works such as the “Communist Manifesto” written by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, as well as writings by Soviet tyrant Joseph Stalin and Russia’s revolutionary leader Vladimir Lenin.
Others included a comic book, an atlas, a report on the state of human rights in Turkey and an essay on the Kurds.
But the books under Kayral’s jurisdiction make up only a fraction of all the titles affected, a total of up to 23,000 works according to Zeynioglu, who said he learned the number from the justice ministry.
The ministry did not immediately confirm the total, a number that Zeynioglu added was hard to nail down.
“These bans weren’t implemented in a centralized fashion: they were ordered by different institutions in different cities at different times,” he said.
“Besides, most have been forgotten over the years and publishers have resumed printing the banned books.”
As an example, the complete works of Turkish poet Nazim Hikmet, who died in exile in Moscow in 1963, had already been stocked in libraries for years despite the ban.
The reform is thus largely symbolic, and some are skeptical of whether it reflects any true change within the Turkish state.
“The mindset hasn’t changed and people (in the administration) will continue to do whatever they think is right,” said Omer Faruk, a former head of the Ayrinti publishing house. – AFP
via Saudi Gazette – Turkey lifts ban on thousands of books.
Kurdish women hold pictures of jailed journalists in Istanbul on Sept. 10, during the start of the trial of 44 journalists with suspected links to rebels from the Kurdistan Workers’ Party. (AFP/Getty Images)
Nov 10, 2012 (Weekend Edition Saturday) — The country is disputing a new report that names it as the world’s leading jailer of journalists, with scores behind bars — ahead of Iran, China and other authoritarian states. Ongoing international attention to Turkey’s treatment of the media has raised hope that reforms could be forthcoming.
Nearly two years ago, Soner Yalcin and more than a dozen of his employees at the online news outlet OdaTV joined the growing list of incarcerated Turkish journalists. Yalcin, the owner of OdaTV, is one of the sharpest critics of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s government.
As their trial proceedings dragged on, challenges to the state’s case grew, and most of the outlet’s journalists were released, pending the trial’s conclusion. But Yalcin and two others remain behind bars, 22 months and counting.
Turkey is disputing a new report that names it as the world’s leading jailer of journalists, with scores behind bars — ahead of Iran, China and other authoritarian states.
The Committee to Protect Journalists met with officials in Ankara this week about the problem and found them adamant that the journalists had broken criminal laws. The ongoing international attention to Turkey’s treatment of the media has raised hopes that reforms could be forthcoming.
Defiance In Prison
Yalcin and his two employees are kept in isolation from the other prisoners, according to his partner, Istanbul interior designer Halidah Kurt. But she says Yalcin is finding plenty of time to read and to write.
“Actually, he’s written a book in jail. It’s about 600 pages, and he wrote it by hand because no computers or no typewriters are allowed in the prison,” she says. “It’s called Samizdat, and it tells about … the latest cases which are taking place in Turkey.”
Choosing the title Samizdat — the Soviet-era term for censored material circulated underground by dissidents — seems likely to infuriate the ruling AK Party. It casts this government, with its roots in political Islam, in the same harsh authoritarian light the prime minister often used to portray the secular, military-backed governments that once dominated Turkey.
The title would also strike a chord with Kati Marton, the journalist and author who led the delegation from the Committee to Protect Journalists to Turkey.
‘Climate Of Fear’
Growing up in Soviet-ruled Hungary, Marton saw her journalist parents arrested and jailed for two years on fabricated charges of espionage.
She told reporters in Istanbul that Turkey is nothing like a Soviet state, and that’s why its record regarding journalists is such a sore point.
“At this particular time, when Turkey has become an even more important regional and world power, and when Turkey has made so many big steps toward democratization, there is a real problem here,” she said, “and the problem is that there is a climate of fear and self-censorship among big sections of the media.”
Marton described her meeting with Turkey’s justice minister as tough. The government rejects CPJ’s finding that it’s holding 61 journalists for doing their job as journalists. Turkey says many of the journalists are facing terrorist-related charges.
A statement from the Justice Ministry said, in part: “These people are not journalists but members of terrorist organizations. Do bombings and killing policemen have anything to do with journalism?”
The problem, according to several analysts, lies with Turkey’s sweeping anti-terrorism law and how it’s being interpreted. Prosecutors have used the law to bring terrorism-related charges against journalists for such activities as interviewing security officers or gathering documents and information related to the Kurdish independence movement.
Balancing Security And Freedom
Turkey’s decades-long battle against Kurdish separatist militants has left some 50,000 dead and passions raging on both sides. Analysts also say journalistic practices among some Turkish media leave much to be desired.
Marton told reporters no one disputes Turkey’s right to deal with security threats, but this widespread media crackdown won’t accomplish that.
“By the way, we understand that Turkey has real security problems. But jailing journalists is not a way to make the country more secure,” she said.
For now, civil rights advocates are pinning their hopes on a legislative effort to enact judicial reforms that many say could go a long way toward guaranteeing media freedoms here. The government wants a reform package by the end of the year.
In the meantime, Kurt and dozens of other family members of journalists will keep making their weekly visits to Turkish prisons.
Copyright 2012 National Public Radio. To see more, visit .
Source: NPR
via As Turkey Rises, ‘A Real Problem’ With Censorship | NCPR News from NPR.
According to CNSnews.com, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi and other Democrats in Congress announced on Thursday that they have moved to ratify an amendment to the United States Constitution that would give Congress power to control the political speech of corporations, including those corporations that produce films, newspapers, books, and radio broadcasts. The amendment would seek to reverse the Supreme Court’s decision in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission in which the High Court ruled that the First Amendment protects the right of free speech for corporations as well as individuals. It was this decision that President Obama openly criticized during his State of the Union address in January of 2010.
Minority Leader Pelosi said that the move to amend the Constitution was part of a three-pronged strategy that includes passage of the DISCLOSE Act, which would further regulate disclosure requirements for organizations that run political ads, and promotion of taxpayer funding of political campaigns. Ms. Pelosi said, “Our Founders had an idea. It was called democracy. It said elections are determined by the people, the voice and the vote of the people, not by the bankrolls of the privileged few. This Supreme Court decision flies in the face of our Founders’ vision and we want to reverse it.”
An Internet content filtering system that Turkey’s Information Technologies and Communications Authority (BTK) introduced on 22 November is proving controversial both domestically and abroad. The outcry has coincided with a conference on the Internet in Turkey that began in the southwestern city of Izmir on 30 November.
After a legal bid by the news and human rights website Bianet to prevent the system’s introduction, the Alternative Information Association (Alternatif Bilisim Dernegi) petitioned the Council of State on 4 November to block it, claiming that it is illegal and unconstitutional.
Although use of the filtering system is optional, it is misleading. It is supposed to protect Internet users, especially minors from “objectionable content” by censoring certain keywords. But tests of the new system have established that access to websites is being blocked arbitrarily.
“The BTK wants us to believe that, by giving Internet users a choice, it is not practicing censorship,” Reporters Without Borders said. “Claiming that use of this filtering system makes an Internet connection secure is disgraceful. Some websites may be inaccessible but that does not make the Internet connection any safer.
“Trying to shield Internet users, especially children and youths, from online pornography is a worthy initiative in principle, but the proposed solution is not fit for purpose and threatens online free expression, as the Court of Justice of the European Union ruled a week ago, above all because of the risk of overblocking. If only porn is supposed to be blocked, why are terms related to Kurdish separatist movements, for example, on the list of censored keywords?
“We condemn a policy of backdoor censorship. The BTK must abandon this system, which is reinforcing Internet censorship in Turkey. We appeal to all the agencies that control telecommunications in Turkey to stop trying to outdo each other in censorship measures. Everyone must be guaranteed unrestricted access to the Internet and it should be up to families, not the state, to decide which content they find objectionable.”
Anyone can sign up for the filtering system, which comes in a family version and a child version. So far only 22,000 of the country’s 11.5 million Internet users have signed up. Internet Service Providers are required to offer it to all their clients. Porn websites and other “suspect” sites that were previously blocked by court decisions will now be automatically filtered out for anyone who adopts the system.
Reporters Without Borders calls on the authorities to provide precise information on the way the filtering works, as it is not at all clear.
The filtering criteria are defined by a commission consisting of 11 members. As most of them are government officials, the commission’s independence and impartiality are questionable. It has so far drawn up a list of 130 “harmful” keywords in Turkish, English and German. The list includes “pornography,” “sex,” and “Verbot” (the German word for “ban”). It also includes such words as “mother-in-law,” “incest” and even “gay.”
This eclectic and often discriminatory list will extend the censorship to ordinary news websites and prevention campaign sites, while encouraging homophobia. Keywords related to separatist political groups such as the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) are also filtered, which clearly shows that the BTK is not just targeting online porn.
As well as the websites targeted by the authorities, it is clear that many other sites are going to be blocked by the censorship system. Google, online social networks and news websites are all liable to be the victims of overblocking.
The system is “arbitrary,” says Yaman Akdeniz, deputy head of the law faculty at Istanbul’s Bilgi University and founder of Cyber-Rights. “The Internet is gradually coming under the government’s control,” he told Reporters Without Borders. “The fact that [this filtering system] is optional does not resolve the problems it creates. We are going to pursue our legal initiatives on behalf of free expression and democracy.”
According to Akdeniz, those who install the “child” option cannot access evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins’ website (see screenshot below) but they can access the site of Adnan Oktar, an Islamic creationist.
Reporters Without Borders’ correspondent has used an online tool called Guvenlinet to identify some of the sites that are blocked by the system. Yasam Radyo (Radio Life), for example, a site that broadcasts cultural programs for minorities, is blocked by the “child” version.
The “child” version also blocks access to Facebook and the online video-sharing website YouTube. Facebook cannot be accessed with the “family” version either, unless the user specifically requests access. Akdeniz said blocking a five-year-old child’s access to YouTube is understandable, but denying access for adolescents over 14 is exaggerated.
The BTK’s filtering system has not left Turkish Internet users indifferent. The Senin Yüzünden – Because of You website is inviting them to post photos of themselves blindfolded in a protest targeted at the Izmir conference that ends on 2 December.
Turkey is listed as a “country under surveillance” in the latest Reporters Without Borders report on “Enemies of the Internet,” which was released on 11 March.
via New Internet filtering system condemned as backdoor censorship – Reporters Without Borders.
The Chinese government has announced the creation of a new body that will help it to supervise the Internet more efficiently, which could result in more effective censorship controls.
The ‘great firewall of China’ has just got a bit greater with the government’s introduction of a new office that will, according to a statement posted Wednesday on its official website, “manage Internet information.”
Up to now, Internet regulation in the country has been conducted by various offices within the government. The creation of the new body, called the State Internet Information Office, brings those offices together to form a single, more effective, agency. Besides improving censorship methods, the office will also oversee the expansion of outside companies into China‘s rapidly growing Internet market.
It will be run by officials from other agencies that already regulate various parts of the Internet. These agencies include the State Council Information Office (responsible for content), the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (regulator of technology and telecommunications areas), and the Ministry of Public Security (responsible for law enforcement). The new State Internet Information Office will be headed by Wang Chen, China’s Information Minister.
Among its many responsibilities, the new body will “direct, coordinate and supervise online content management and handle administrative approval of businesses related to online news reporting.” It will also “direct the development of online gaming, online video and audio businesses and online publication industries.”
In a country where the government already tries hard to control the flow of information in cyberspace, the State Internet Information Office will likely serve to enhance censorship of the Web. The announcement of the new office comes at a time when the Chinese government is concerned about pro-democracy protests happening off the back of those in the Middle East in recent months. Beijing officials will be hoping that effective regulation will ensure better monitoring of any politically sensitive Web traffic, thereby helping to prevent any serious unrest within the country.
In an ominous note to Chinese Web users who are thinking of challenging the system, the statement also says that the new body will “investigate and punish websites violating laws and regulations.”
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