page_title: Censorship in Turkey
section_title: Blocking of Internet sites
hierarchical_section_title: Censorship in Turkey / Internet censorship / Blocking of Internet sites
caption_attribution_description: English: The notification used by TİB stating the legal authority under which the particular website is blocked.
context_page_description: Censorship in Turkey is regulated by domestic and international legislation, the latter taking precedence over domestic law, according to Article 90 of the Constitution of Turkey.
  Despite legal provisions, freedom of the press in Turkey has steadily deteriorated from 2010 onwards, with a precipitous decline following the attempted coup in July 2016. President Tayyip Erdoğan has arrested hundreds of journalists, closed or taken over dozens of media outlets, and prevented journalists and their families from traveling. By some accounts, Turkey currently accounts for one-third of all journalists imprisoned around the world.
  Since 2013, Freedom House ranks Turkey as "Not Free". Reporters Without Borders ranked Turkey at the 149th place out of over 180 countries, between Mexico and DR Congo, with a score of 44.16. In the third quarter of 2015, the independent Turkish press agency Bianet recorded a strengthening of attacks on opposition media under the Justice and Development Party interim government.
context_section_description: Web sites are blocked for intellectual property infringement, particularly file sharing and streaming sites; for providing access to material that shows or promotes the sexual exploitation and abuse of children, obscenity, prostitution, or gambling; for insults to Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, the founding father of modern Turkey; for reporting news on southeastern Turkey and Kurdish issues; or which defame individuals. In addition to widespread filtering, state authorities are proactive in requesting the deletion or removal of content online. Imgur, Pastebin and TinyURL were also blocked in Turkey.
  A leading case regarding Internet censorship is Ahmet Yildirim v. Turkey (2013), before the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR): it concerns the Internet Law No. 5651 and the blocking of "Google Sites", defamation, the usage of disproportionate measures and the need for restrictions to be prescribed by law.
  Some other cases of blocking of Internet sites are the following:
  On 7 March 2007, Turkish courts imposed a ban on YouTube due to a speculative video that insulted Mustafa Kemal Atatürk. Before the judgement, the court asked YouTube to remove the video completely, but they refused, saying they could only make it invisible for the Turkish people. The refusal made the matter a violation of article 8, dating back to 1951. Two days later the ban was briefly lifted, then reinstated.
  By August 2008 hundreds of sites are temporarily blocked on similar grounds.
  In May 2008, Turkey blocked YouTube again for 30-months.
  According to an August 2008 Milliyet article, 11494 complaints (mostly on grounds of indecency) have resulted in 853 motions to block.
  By mid-2008 growing discontent with the blocks resulted in a grass roots protest campaign organized by the Web site elmaaltshift.com, which encouraged Web sites to replace their home page with an interstitial webpage titled "Access To This Site Is Denied By Its Own Decision."
  On October 2008 article in Radikal raised the number of blocked sites to 1112. YouTube's parent, Google, decided to selectively prevent access to the offending videos to users in Turkey in order to prevent the entire site from being blocked. Turkish prosecutors, not content, demanded a global block in order not to offend Turkish users abroad. Google did not comply.
  In September 2008, Richard Dawkins' site, richarddawkins.net, was banned in Turkey as a result of complaints by Islamic creationist Adnan Oktar that his book The Atlas of Creation, which contests the theory of evolution, had been defamed on Dawkins' website.
  In October 2008 the Turkish Minister of Transport Binali Yıldırım defended the bans, saying "Practices are needed to protect young people and the public at large from harmful material online." The newspaper Taraf said that the persistent banning of Web sites can be attributed to judges inexperience in dealing with the Internet.
  In October 2008, the courts banned the Blogger (service), including the Blogspot.com domain after Lig TV (whose parent company is Digiturk) complained of copyright violation. This ban was lifted after a few hours.
  In November 2008, the courts banned the "Rojname – Kurdish news search engine", including the rojname.com domain.
  As of December 2008, after prime minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan encouraged people to work around the YouTube block, its number of visitors doubled making it the fifth-most visited Web site, according to Alexa.com.
  As of June 2010, beside YouTube, more than 8,000 major and minor websites were banned, most of them pornographic and mp3 sharing sites. Other prominent websites banned include YouPorn, Mrstiff, The Pirate Bay, Megaupload, Deezer, Tagged, Slide, Dudesnude, and SHOUTcast. The Internet Movie Database has escaped being censored due to a misspelling of its domain, resulting in a futile ban on imbd.com.
  In 2010, the video sharing site Metacafe was banned by the Telecommunications Communication Presidency (TİB) of Turkey after the posting of an alleged scandalous video of the former CHP leader Deniz Baykal.
  During June 2010 Turkey's president Abdullah Gül 
caption: The notification used by TİB stating the legal authority under which the particular website is blocked.
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