Quoted in the CPJ report: “How Turkey silences journalists online, one removal request at a time

 

A picture representing a mugshot of the Twitter bird–Twitter’s logo–is seen on a smartphone with a Turkish flag on March 26, 2014, in Istanbul, during the ban of the platform for about two weeks in the country. (AFP/Ozan Kose)
On June 19, Abdülhamit Bilici, the last editor-in-chief of the now-shuttered Turkish paper Zaman, tweeted about the decline of press freedom in his home country. If you can see his tweet, you are probably not in Turkey because it is among the over 1.5 million tweets belonging to journalists and media outlets censored there under Twitter’s “country withheld content” (CWC) policy.Since 201213 countries have used Twitter’s CWC tool to effectively censor content, according to the social media platform’s transparency reports. Governments usually cite laws around national security, counter-terrorism, defamation, or hate speech when requesting removals.

Internet connectivity will be partially disrupted throughout Turkey from the 10th of August to protect a Qatar-owned media group’s sports broadcasting rights.

Turkish courts have ordered the periodic disruption of all internet live video streams in Turkey provided by Twitter Inc. under the Periscope service, known as Scope in Turkey, at times when Turkish premier league soccer matches are being aired by the group’s Digitürk brand.

Despite spending more than 20 months in prison, the Kurdish political leader Selahattin Demirtas finished third in Turkey’s election. But life may only get harder now.
The Association of Turkish Travel Agencies (TÜRSAB), which has paved the way for blocking Booking.com in Turkey, has decided to take legal action against 20 other online reservation and travel portals.

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