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] More specifically, 5651 authorizes a centralized board, the Telecommunications Communication Presidency or TIB to oversee website filtering; the TIB both administers court-ordered blocks, which comprise 21 percent of all bans, and independently implements the remaining 79 percent (Akdeniz and Altiparmak). Although 5651 purports to protect children from harmful content, it also restricts adult access to legal, political content, including LGBTQ and Kurdish social networking and independent journalism. In response, local free-speech advocacy groups such as EngelliWeb (“Blocked Web”), Sansüre Sansur (“Censor the Censorship”) and Bianet, as well as international NGOs like Reporters without Borders, Electronic Frontier Foundation and Freedom House, are building an Internet freedom movement through journalistic writing, mass demonstrations and litigation in national and supranational courts.[2] The largest protest to date occurred on May 15th 2011 in response to a government decision to apply new filters in August. An estimated 50,000 participants protested in Istanbul and over 40 Turkish cities reported smaller demonstrations.
It is imperative to understand that Law 5651 loosely operates at the level of ISPs and public access points (cyber-cafes, schools, libraries), which must apply to the TIB for “activity certificates” and adopt pre-approved filtering software. In addition, public access points must cache user data for one year while ISPs have no such requirement. Nevertheless, in spite of 5651, users readily access proxy servers and VPNs to anonymously circumvent website blocks. This is especially prevalent at home because ISPs hesitate to lose customers by blocking popular proxy-sites. Thus, on the one hand, because public libraries and cyber-cafés feel greater pressure from the state and social pressure (cultural norms), they often apply more restrictive filters than legally required. On the other hand, the growth and diversification of ISPs – and in particular, the fact that customer transactions occur in private – has made them difficult to regulate. Consequently, well after 2007’s Law 5651, the Turkish blogosphere continued to flourish, at least among users who own personal computers (22.5% of the 71 million total population in 2008, TurkStat).
However, a more restrictive Internet law will take effect on August 22nd, 2011, requiring the installation of filtering software on individual computers. In contrast to 5651 – which made filtering mandatory in public space yet laxly held ISPs accountable for filtering and monitoring private customers – this new law will require each user to install one of four filters before gaining Internet service: “standard”, “family”, “child” or “domestic”. Each of these contains a confidential IP-address blacklist under the purview of the Information Technologies Board (BTK), an ancillary of the Prime Ministry and the overseer of the TIB. In other words, to remediate the courts’ slow and inefficient blocking procedures (as a tedious appeal process hinders the ability to adapt policy to the rapid emergence of alternative websites and circumvention technologies), the government has opted for an even more centralized framework than before. Combined with the new filters is a list of 138 banned keywords including “free” “pic” “fat” and “pregnant” (Reporters without Borders, CITE). As the BTK/TIB tightens control over private users, eliminates courtroom lag and conceals the details of banning-list contents, widespread concerns over freedom of information and democracy are manifesting in reinvigorated public protest. In interviews conducted in Summer 2011, for example, activists emphasized how the numbers of anti-censorship protestors have drastically increased from 2010 to 2011 (citing a jump from approximately 2,000 to 50,000).
The “solution” of increased filtering carries an array of drawbacks for the state. For example, the aforementioned “Don’t Touch My Internet” walk on May 15th 2011, Turkey’s largest anti-censorship grassroots demonstration to-date (see Fig.1[i]), led to increased international scrutiny.
Fig. 1. On May 15th 2011, over 10,000 protestors filled Istanbul’s square to voice their opposition towards a new filtering law to be implemented this August. This organizing poster reads: “Write. Ask questions. Find information. Meet people. Make friends. Laugh. Enjoy. Cry. Listen to music. Research. Take ideas. Give ideas. Watch. See. Open ears. Listen. Build dreams. Take and give inspiration. Think. Learn. Wonder. Read, Look. Find. Ask. Answer. Talk. Write. Look inside. Open up. Sell. Buy. Create jobs. Find jobs. Send to friends. Like. Dislike. Interpret. Socialize. Open the world. See. Hear. Open your eyes. Walk. The ‘Don’t touch my Internet’ Walk, 15th of May, 2pm” (my translation).
Moreover, in June 2011, hacktivist group Anonymous – who in 2009 created alternative online networks for Iranian Green Movement participants – promised to initiate “Operation Turkey,” a series of cyber-attacks in retaliation against the upcoming August filters (after some government websites were attacked, 32 people were arrested).[3] Meanwhile, Turkey’s reputation among global human rights organizations assessing Internet freedom is worsening. One such example is Reporters without Borders’ (RWB) annually published Internet censorship map in which Turkey is classified as a “country under surveillance” (see Fig. 2 below).[4] In lieu of the August filters, the RWB’s comparison of Turkey – a symbol for Middle Eastern democracy – to “Enemies of the Internet” like China, Cuba and Iran is arguably more apropos. At the same time, the RWB’s categorizations, and the rhetoric of global free speech activism in general, require further reflection and unpacking.
Fig. 2: “Enemies of the Internet” Map (Reporters Without Borders)
While comparing global inequity in information access, the above map suggests that Internet freedom obviates centralized state control and national borders, yet paradoxically the map also measures and represents Internet freedom on a national scale. Its totalizing perspective draws our eyes towards countries-in-red, pulling our attention away from the gray, Western hemisphere. We forget that state Internet regulation exists everywhere, that even the U.S.’s regulatory framework has issues of fair-use, transparency and equity, especially when considering the FCC’s current ambivalence towards protecting net neutrality.[5] Furthermore, the RWB fails to consider how the Internet and Internet freedom might mean different things in different contexts, and how each country’s history of Internet development reveals specificity in terms of particular transnational political-economic influences and distinct indigenous socio-cultural beliefs. These specificities point to intellectual boarders that scholars should recognize (not fetishize) when analyzing Internet use in a specific context.
Similar to the RWB’s counter-surveillance, the European Union creates its own yearly measurements of Turkey, which it terms “progress reports”.[6] Still, the E.U. seems to be a watchdog without much bite, unless its vested economic interests in creating a competitive regional information society appear threatened (Christensen). Importantly, while concerned over free-speech violations, the E.U. is equally concerned over impediments to liberalizing Turkey’s telecom sector, a prerequisite for full membership. Although in 2005 the Turkish government privatized its national telecommunications corporation, Türk Telekom (TT), full deregulation never followed. Currently, ninety-five ISPs rent space on TT controlled fiber-optic cables and then sell this connectivity to individual customers. Although increased ISP competition is favored by the E.U., it also makes ISPs more difficult to regulate. The Turkish government’s August filters are intended to assuage this difficulty, but from the E.U.’s perspective, they highlight the continuance of a state-controlled telecom monopoly.
What is unknown is whether or not anti-censorship protestors’ demands are sympathized with by a majority of Turks, or even if Internet filtering is a primary public concern when approximately 18% of Turks live below the poverty-line and less than half regularly use the Internet (TurkStat, 2011). Indeed, many may favor an increase in state filtering as a way to maintain a national, hetero-normative, child-safe and Islam-respectful cyberspace. Interestingly, unlike most hot-button issues in the current polarized political climate, Internet filtering is a strategy of control that opposing political camps actually agree upon. While many secularists disdainfully view the near-long decade of Islamist party (AKP) power as a precursor to Turkey “becoming Iran” and use the BTK’s recent attempts to increase Internet filtering as the latest evidence of Turkish Islamization, centralized control over public information has been a favorite secular-party tactic since the institution of the Republic in 1923. Likewise, while the AKP has sought constitutional reforms to expand the freedom of religious expression, the party also aims to cultivate and protect an Islamic public sphere, online and off, and transnational in scope. This has required restrictions on online speech denigrating Islamic beliefs, yet the official rhetoric of Internet filtering tends to be framed as protecting “family values.” Of course, a discourse of family and child protection calls attention away from the AKP’s restrictions not only on anti-Islamic expression but also of criticisms of the government (in fact, some journalists are currently in jail due to dissident writings; many of them are being accused of Ergenekon participation). In sum, and what human rights activists repeatedly bring up, is that while Turkey’s main political parties appear to be polar opposites – the CHP “secularists” and AKP “islamists” – they align around the common goal of controlling media technology in order to curb dissident speech that could erode their powerholds. Indeed, activists see their current struggle as quite similar to that of their parents during the post-1980 coup. For them, not much has changed. Centralized control without accountability, lack of public transparency, and restricted freedoms of information and expression remain the issues of the day. What has changed, however, are the tactics of resistance.
[1] For a clarification of the circumstances surrounding this event, see Jeffrey Rosen’s “Google’s Gatekeepers.” The New York Times Magazine, November 30th, 2008.
[2] Two NGOs – the All Internet Association (TID) and the Turkish Informatics Association (TBD)- have brought cases to the Turkish Council of State in an effort to annul secondary regulations drawn up on the basis of Law No. 5651 as unconstitutional. Additionally, the Turkish government is suing Google in a national court for tax withholding, and the TID sued the Turkish government in the European Court of Human Rights for banning YouTube.
[3] Their motto: “We are Anonymous. We are Legion. We do not forgive. We do not forget. Expect us.” For information on “Operation Turkey”: http://blogs.wsj.com/emergingeurope/2011/06/07/hackers-announce-operation-turkey/?mod=google_news_blog ; See their YouTube video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L87SPk6i-hM&feature=player_embedded
also see article about attacks and arrests: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-13762626
[5] Consider the December 21st FCC decision on net neutrality: http://tcf.org/commentary/2011/the-platform-what-happened-to-net-neutrality
[6] See “Turkey Progress Report.” Commission to the European Parliament and the Council: Enlargement Strategy and Main Challenges 2008-2009. Brussels: Commission of the European Communities; negotiations for Turkey’s full membership into the European Union began in 2005.
Proxy Cultures 