| Formation | 2015 |
|---|---|
| Website | https://turkeyblocks.org/ |
Turkey Blocks (also known as TurkeyBlocks.org) is an independent digital research organization that monitors internet access restrictions and their relation to political incidents in Turkey. [1] [2] Using its network of monitoring probes, the project has uncovered and documented systematic mass-censorship of communications infrastructure, primarily social media services, during national emergencies and incidents of political significance relating to human rights, freedom of expression and public policy in the region.
Describing its activities as non-partisan and impartial, the group does not conduct advocacy directly, instead coordinating with non-profits including international advocacy group Access Now and Turkey's Alternative Informatics Association to help raise public awareness surrounding the human, economic and political cost of internet shutdowns in Turkey. [3]
On the morning of 29 April 2017, Turkey Blocks broke news of the nationwide block of all language editions of the Wikipedia online encyclopedia. [4] [5] [6] [7] The alert, cited widely by international media and Turkish national broadcaster TRT, described a scheme of "filtering [...] in addition to DNS spoofing" applied by service providers to restrict access to the popular website. [8] [9] [10]
On 8 October 2016 Turkey Blocks detected, verified and broke news of a major network incident affecting almost all access to cloud storage facilities from Turkey, including Dropbox, Google Drive and Microsoft OneDrive following the leak of politically sensitive emails by hacktivism group RedHack. [11] [12]
A further nationwide block of developer portal GitHub was identified the following day, making Turkey one of few states that have censored GitHub to suppress the spread of sensitive information. The incidents caused widespread outrage amongst technologists, making headlines in technology news outlets both domestically and internationally that potentially contributed to the restoration of service within a matter of days. [13]
The Turkey Blocks research team worked throughout the 2016 Turkish coup d'état attempt to document digital interference, continuing to monitor as jets and tanks neared their office; "We were hearing the jets here in Istanbul and monitoring at the same time. It was pretty crazy," Alp Toker, initiator and coordinator of Turkey Blocks recounts to Deutsche Welle. [14]
Forbes and The Wall Street Journal interpreted the resulting Turkey Blocks data from the night of the abortive coup d'état as indications of a rapid u-turn in Turkey's online policy - timings show that president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan's government first blocked, then subsequently unblocked and effectively used social media service Twitter to mobilize supporters. [2] [15] The measurements collected by Turkey Blocks contributed to the present understanding of the night's violent course, highlighting the influence of social media, online censorship and digital controls on public behavior during national emergencies as ultimately, "Erdogan supporters flooded out onto the streets, the coup was stopped." [16]
In 2015 Human Rights Watch cited evidence collected by Turkey Blocks in its open letter calling on the government of Turkey to "protect the right of people in Turkey to freely seek, receive, and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers." [17] The letter observes that the “network throttling” of Twitter and Facebook following the October 2015 Ankara bombings amplified personal tragedy caused by mass censorship incidents at a "time when citizens relied most on independent news and social media, and directly infringes on people’s right to access information."
Speaking to The Wall Street Journal, Alp Toker identified eight separate incidents of mass-censorship online "often in the wake of a terrorist attack" between July 2015 and July 2016, a number which has continued to rise through late 2016. [15] Each of the incidents identified by Turkey Blocks incorporated censorship of Twitter, and more recently also censorship of Facebook for periods of hours or days. [18]
In August 2016 researchers at Turkey Blocks identified new emergency wartime legislation introduced by the state as a likely pretext for a social media shutdown observed on the eve of Turkey's military operation Euphrates Shield during which incursions were made on the border with Syria. [19] [20]
As a relatively young organization with the goal of "changing the way freedom of expression is done," Turkey Blocks claims to have successfully combined investigative journalism with data science to broaden understanding of internet access issues and their underlying causes. Shutdowns were previously observed to coincide with events of political significance, yet were often mis-attributed to network congestion due to lack of data.
In this regard, widespread media coverage and assertive public interest generated in response to the group's findings suggest the methodology to have proven effective as a means for enhancing digital transparency in Turkey. [21]
The Great Firewall is the combination of legislative actions and technologies enforced by the People's Republic of China to regulate the Internet domestically. Its role in internet censorship in China is to block access to selected foreign websites and to slow down cross-border internet traffic. The Great Firewall operates by checking transmission control protocol (TCP) packets for keywords or sensitive words. If the keywords or sensitive words appear in the TCP packets, access will be closed. If one link is closed, more links from the same machine will be blocked by the Great Firewall. The effect includes: limiting access to foreign information sources, blocking foreign internet tools and mobile apps, and requiring foreign companies to adapt to domestic regulations.
Internet censorship in Pakistan is government control of information sent and received using the Internet in Pakistan. There have been significant instances of website access restriction in Pakistan, most notably when YouTube was banned from 2012–2016. Pakistan has asked a number of social media organisations to set up local offices within the country, but this is yet to happen.
Censorship was ranked among the world's most extreme in 2020. Reporters Without Borders ranked Iran 173 out of 180 countries in the World Press Freedom Index, which ranks countries from 1 to 180 based on the level of freedom of the press. Reporters Without Borders described Iran as “one of the world’s five biggest prisons for media personnel" in the 40 years since the revolution. In the Freedom House Index, Iran scored low on political rights and civil liberties and has been classified as 'not free.'
Internet censorship in India is done by both central and state governments. DNS filtering and educating service users in suggested usages is an active strategy and government policy to regulate and block access to Internet content on a large scale. Also measures for removing content at the request of content creators through court orders have become more common in recent years. Initiating a mass surveillance government project like Golden Shield Project is also an alternative discussed over the years by government bodies.
The Internet in Myanmar has been available since 2000 when the first Internet connections were established. Beginning in September 2011, historically-pervasive levels of Internet censorship in Burma were significantly reduced. Prior to September 2011, the military government worked aggressively to limit and control Internet access through software-based censorship, infrastructure and technical constraints, and laws and regulations with large fines and lengthy prison sentences for violators. In 2015, internet usage significantly increased to 12.6% with the introduction of faster mobile 3G internet by transnational telecommunication companies Telenor Myanmar and Ooredoo Myanmar, later joined by national Myanmar Post and Telecommunications (MPT). While the Internet situation in Myanmar has undergone change since its introduction in 2010 and reduction of censorship in 2011, laws such as the 2013 Telecommunications Law continue to restrict citizens from total freedom online. Despite restrictions, internet penetration continues to grow across the country.
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.
Internet censorship is the legal control or suppression of what can be accessed, published, or viewed on the Internet. Censorship is most often applied to specific internet domains but exceptionally may extend to all Internet resources located outside the jurisdiction of the censoring state. Internet censorship may also put restrictions on what information can be made internet accessible. Organizations providing internet access – such as schools and libraries – may choose to preclude access to material that they consider undesirable, offensive, age-inappropriate or even illegal, and regard this as ethical behaviour rather than censorship. Individuals and organizations may engage in self-censorship of material they publish, for moral, religious, or business reasons, to conform to societal norms, political views, due to intimidation, or out of fear of legal or other consequences.
The Internet in Turkey has been available to the public since 1993, although experimentation at Ege University started in 1987. The first available connections were dial-up. Cable Internet has been available since 1998 and ADSL since 2001.
The American video-sharing platform YouTube is the second-most popular website as of August 2019, according to Alexa Internet. According to the company's press page, YouTube has more than one billion users, and each day, those users watch more than one billion hours of video. Censorship of it has occurred and continues to occur to varying degrees in most countries throughout the world.
The Federal Service for Supervision of Communications, Information Technology and Mass Media, abbreviated as Roskomnadzor (RKN), is the Russian federal executive agency responsible for monitoring, controlling and censoring Russian mass media. Its areas of responsibility include electronic media, mass communications, information technology and telecommunications, supervising compliance with the law, protecting the confidentiality of personal data being processed, and organizing the work of the radio-frequency service.
Facebook is a social networking service that has been gradually replacing traditional media channels since 2010. Facebook has limited moderation of the content posted to its site. Because the site indiscriminately displays material publicly posted by users, Facebook can, in effect, threaten oppressive governments. Facebook can simultaneously propagate fake news, hate speech, and misinformation, thereby undermining the credibility of online platforms and social media.
Censorship of Twitter refers to Internet censorship by governments that block access to Twitter. Twitter censorship also includes governmental notice and take down requests to Twitter, which Twitter enforces in accordance with its Terms of Service when a government or authority submits a valid removal request to Twitter indicating that specific content is illegal in their jurisdiction.
In Russia, internet censorship is enforced on the basis of several laws and through several mechanisms. Since 2012, Russia maintains a centralized internet blacklist maintained by the Federal Service for Supervision of Communications, Information Technology and Mass Media (Roskomnadzor).
Internet regulation in Turkey is primarily authorized under the Electronic Communications Law (ECL) and the Internet Act and carried out by the Information and Communication Technologies Authority (ICTA).
GitHub has been the target of censorship from governments using methods ranging from local Internet service provider blocks, intermediary blocking using methods such as DNS hijacking and man-in-the-middle attacks, and denial-of-service attacks on GitHub's servers from countries including China, India, Iraq, and Russia. In all of these cases, GitHub has been eventually unblocked after backlash from users and technology businesses or compliance from GitHub.
Just-in-time blocking is the practice of temporarily blocking internet access for people in a specific geographic area, to prevent them from accessing information or communicating with each other.
On 15 July 2016, a faction within the Turkish Armed Forces, organized as the Peace at Home Council, attempted a coup d'état against state institutions, including the government and president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. They attempted to seize control of several places in Ankara, Istanbul, Marmaris and elsewhere, such as the Asian side entrance of the Bosphorus Bridge, but failed to do so after forces loyal to the state defeated them. The Council cited an erosion of secularism, elimination of democratic rule, disregard for human rights, and Turkey's loss of credibility in the international arena as reasons for the coup. The government said the coup leaders were linked to the Gülen movement, which is designated as a terrorist organization by the Republic of Turkey and led by Fethullah Gülen, a Turkish businessman and a well-known Islamic scholar who lives in exile in Pennsylvania. The Turkish government alleged that Gülen was behind the coup and that the United States was harboring him. Events surrounding the coup attempt and the purges in its aftermath reflect a complex power struggle between Islamist elites in Turkey.
The 2016–present purges in Turkey are a series of purges by the Government of Turkey enabled by a state of emergency in reaction to the 15 July failed coup d'état. The purges began with the arrest of Turkish Armed Forces personnel reportedly linked to the coup attempt but arrests were expanded to include other elements of the Turkish military, as well as civil servants and private citizens. These later actions reflected a power struggle between secularist and Islamist political elites in Turkey, affected people who were not active in nor aware of the coup, but who the government claimed were connected with the Gülen movement, an opposition group which the government blamed for the coup. Possession of books authored by Gülen was considered valid evidence of such a connection and cause for arrest.
From 29 April 2017 to 15 January 2020, the online encyclopedia Wikipedia was blocked in Turkey. On 29 April 2017, Turkish authorities blocked online access to all its language editions throughout the country. The restrictions were imposed by Turkish Law No. 5651, due to the English version's article on state-sponsored terrorism, where Turkey was described as a sponsor country for the Islamic State and Al-Qaeda. Turkish courts viewed the article as a public manipulation of mass media. Requests by the Turkish Information and Communication Technologies Authority to edit several articles to comply with Turkish law were not acted on.
NetBlocks is a watchdog organization that monitors cybersecurity and the governance of the Internet. The service was launched in 2017 to monitor Internet freedom.
Internet censorship circumvention technologies | |||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Background |
| ||||||
| Principles |
| ||||||
| Anti-censorship software |
| ||||||
| Anonymity |
| ||||||
| Physical circumvention methods | |||||||
| Relevant organizations | |||||||
| Reference | |||||||
