14 DAY TRIAL // The Turkish cyberspace is dealing with serious problems regarding censorship. For the past two years ago, several video hosting websites have been banned. Their creators were accused of infringing upon the integrity of different public persons or institutions. YouTube itself was banned a couple of times, but it's the latest ban of it, which has been standing as of May, that is the longest in history. The reason for which YouTube was considered inappropriate was that the Google property displayed certain videos that more or less attacked Mustafa Ataturk, the founder of modern Turkey.
Other websites, like popular portals or online marketplaces, were shut down by the authorities one by one, being accused of hosting content that infringed the official laws or common-sense beliefs. Over the last few days, Turkish bloggers have reported that censorship was beginning to be felt as far their personal webpages were concerned as well. Authorities have started to block access to some of the weblogs, whose content became unreachable. Instead of it, visitors would receive the message "This site is banned due to court decision."
Country Manager Turkey of mixxt, Sekip Can G?kalp, writes on TheNextWeb about one blogger that decided to fight the system and voluntarily shut down his website, to protest against the decisions of the authorities. Moreover, he wrote a piece of code to enable anyone that might want to protest in the same way to shut down their weblogs. At the time of writing, 227 bloggers have joined the movement and have consequently displayed on their websites the message "The access to this website is prevented by its owner's free will."
"People just get used to lose their freedom. This experiment is trying to shock people by trying to show them how it would be if sites got banned so fast. I think it would increase the awareness of people very well." Selim Y?r?k, the creator of the code, reportedly said.