must make comments

Probably the zillionth entry about the Blogspot Ban in Turkey. I personally don’t care about repeating a theme. I intend to speak more than “free speech”, a concept that I hope every reader of this blog is familiar with.

After the ban of blogspot.com and related blogs in Turkey, Turkish blogsphere has entered into frenzy against the government. The legal regulation of the AKP government, which did nothing after the YouTube ban but advice to “circumvent” the obstacles, enabled the banning of blogspot.com related blogs in Turkey upon the request of Digiturk, a satellite TV provider. Digiturk detected some extremely famous blogs broadcasting Turkish Football League matches, which have a billion dollar value for four years, and are supposed to be watched only through Digiturk’s satellite channels or official website.

The importance of blogging has been the very subject of some of my entries. Some articles on this blog are also written for expressing some political opinions. I don’t want to write about how as bloggers we have to react against the government. I just want bring out some aspects of this legal framework, and its application.

The copyrights of trillion dollars film and TV industry of mainly USA, Britain, and Turkey are systemically violated by some TV series portals, which stream full seasons of TV series filmed in these countries. They are subject to similar bans, but they have already established a very efficient network, a privilege that does not belong to a simple blogger; so a client is never deprived from watching the last episode of his favorite TV show utmost 2 hours later than the original broadcast. In addition to that accessibility, many decent companies advertise on those sites. A TV show, which was broadcast last night, has attracted over 20,000 viewers in 24 hours. Consider at least 10 new episodes a day are uploaded to one of those portals, and although those videos are shared by some others, the estimated viewers and the market value of those “sites” are quite high.

You seriously don’t want to upset devoted and some thousand TV series addicts, but chic fashion bloggers, bright politic activists, or depressed homosexual teenagers are OK to get rid of. If they are operating under the same umbrella of some rule breaker, they are easily kicked out of the “clean and safe” cyber area of the government.

I should remind you that “clean and safe” cyber area is also free of porn and dating sites. It used to be clean of any YouTube junk. And yet, all those material, and maybe even more could be found on Facebook, which seems politically untouchable and probably legally unchallengeable. Another reason might be that Facebook is also providing a significant mobilization and cyber space for the campaign of the ruling party. YouTube was closed for videos insulting Ataturk, and although some “citizens” of Facebook-land insulted the same persona, Facebook was never even threatened by the legal officers.

Having said that, a dear friend of mine, and a very talented TV critic through her blog, is actually embodying all those examples above. Her blog is no longer reachable through legal ways, and the TV show she constantly writes about is aired tomorrow. She basically will not be able to upload her entry to her blog, and she already expressed her frustration on her Twitter and Facebook accounts. The suggestion of the audience was fast and simple: Put your writing on Facebook in form of “Notes”. She said she would think about it.

This ban has not only silenced bloggers, but also forced them to take a “more conventional” way to place their thoughts. This ban has not only limited a free thinker, but also suggested her a position in the “determined” and “clean and safe” environment designated by the power.

This ban did not touch some 20,000 devotees of one single TV show, but actually a critical voice among them. I think this is what we are supposed to react against. The majority is still doing fine, those who are writing about it seems to be in pain.