background on Turkish internet politics

Under the rationale of protecting of public safety, the Turkish government has blocked over 9,000 websites to date; yet because powerful stakeholders in military, judicial, religious and private sectors influence banning decisions, websites expressing alternative viewpoints are often conflated with security threats. An infamous case occurred in 2007, when an Istanbul court used newly established Internet Law No. 5651 to suspend YouTube for hosting web-videos portraying Kemal Mustafa Atatürk, the founder of the Turkish Republic, as a homosexual.[1]