Turkey blocks popular blogging platform WordPress.com

The popular, and free, blogging platform WordPress.com has been blocked in Turkey and those who are trying to visit it are seeing this 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.

I didn’t realize Turkey had a great firewall like China. This is really unfortunate because we have a really passionate Turkish community that gets about 12 million pageviews a month,” the founding developer of WordPress, Matthew Mullenweg, said.

12 comments

  • Since Turkey is obsessed with Ataturk:
    imagine that he will bring be alive just for one day, who he want to spank? The politicians? The Generals? The Judges and their knights?
    I think he will say: ‘let me live one day in peace in Greece, where I was born’..))

  • Quoted:
    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.

  • Another major embarrassment for Turkey. Lesson still not learnt: Think before you act!

    And all along I thought it was a great ploy by Typepad and Blogger to move in on the WordPress marketshare . . .

    :)

  • Ozhan
    Do you want to become famous?
    Your story is a gossip.
    No access to wordpress.
    Salut
    Hans

  • […] platform in Turkey. On August 17, 2007, the Turkish Fatih Second Civil Court of First Instance blocked access to all wordpress.com blogs in response to a suit filed by Adnan Oktar’s lawyers on the grounds that blogs hosted on the […]

  • […] platform in Turkey. On August 17, 2007, the Turkish Fatih Second Civil Court of First Instance blocked access to all wordpress.com blogs in response to a suit filed by Adnan Oktar’s lawyers on the grounds that blogs hosted on the […]

  • Knowing a bit from the first hand experience with the Turkish judicial system and the bureaucracy , I blamed primarily the system in this ostensibly minor event turning into a saga. It appears now that there is enough blame to go around including possibly the WP which I held blameless so far (See A view on the matter from one of the victims: “WordPress banned in Turkey: a case of throwing the baby with the bath-water“)

    Perusing through some of the comments on the matter in various sites, it appears that some of the commenters have an ax to grind with Adnan Oktar ( a.k.a. Harun Yahya) . They make his an issue of creationism versus evolutionism, which it should not be. The position Matt seems to be taking is that it is a free exchange of information in the internet , as parti of fundamental right of free speech.

    This is certainly a view held by many including myself in principle. However the matter gets a bit thorny when you get into the limits, boundaries of the exercise of such right. That is why we have caseloads before the courts dealing with issues such as slander, defamation, libel, trademarks, copyrights and so on, -some of which are involved in this case. I am not going to attempt to sort out all the legal and moral issues and heir ramifications in this case. All I am trying o do is to invite all concerned to differentiate between personal dislike for a person, or opposition to his views on certain matters and justice.

    I understand the predicament Matt and WP finds themselves in. They see the issue as an undemocratic justice system and an individual with strong arming the system to demand immunity from criticism. They are taking a stand on the side of the free speech. I urge them however to go beyond that reflexive behavior and engage in a bit deeper analysis of what Edip Yuksel is doing , and whether he is going over the bounds vis-a-vis the free speech. He has made a name for himself for attacking various religious persons, institutions and values sacred to others. I do not contest his right to be wrong , but I am also cognizant of the fact that WP does render judgement on suitability of the content of the blogs. The method Edip Yuksel is employing , specifically targeting another individual, and inviting others to abuse the blogging system with multiple blogs directed at the same purpose should also be questioned. WP cannot judge the veracity of all accusations in millions of pages of content, however it can place certain limits such as selection of blog names etc, as it does in the terms of service it is offering. Edip Yuksel and others should also be mindful of the fact that they have the right to free speech but exercising it on WP is a privilege.

  • A true embarassment for the Turkish technotrats as the issue still not resolved on the 6th day.

  • I am surprised Baykal hasn’t blamed this on the AKP Government! Oh sorry . . . he’s too busy making sure he leads by example (and practices what he preaches when it comes to ‘democracy’ where as (still) the party leader he can manipulate (or else!) all his faithful congregation not to attend the national assembly during a critical vote of an ‘honorous’ position of the presidency, for which he has no alternative nor an option.

    Sounds like the ‘Democrats’ here in the US. Just attack the other guy but have no opinion or solution of your own!

  • It’s really sad and totally backward and stupid. However, one can still get access to wordpress sites through free DNS (google it) or opening google translate at http://google.com/translate and then typing the url of the wordpress site you want to visit, selecting language from any(any language)-english. It works

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