Turkey vs Freedom of Speech: The Latest Episode

Turkey has had a turbulent past but is now a democracy, hoping to join the European Union. Yet this ambition is swiftly receding as the current government takes a stance that appears to quash the right to freedom of speech. Recently there have been a series of incidents where social media has been blocked and websites denied access when the government has felt there is a conflict with its own agenda and values. In fact, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, the current president, has described Twitter as “the worst menace to society”.

Repeated clampdowns

The most recent controversy concerns a siege which resulted in the deaths of two of the captors and a hostage. When the story broke, it was not the reporting of the siege that was called into question but the use of a photograph of the dead hostage being held at gunpoint by a masked man, both of whom were now deceased. The picture was circulated widely on social media and used by a number of news agencies, including the New York Times.

The government took the view that the image was distasteful and shut down both Twitter and YouTube to prevent it being shared. Far from being the first instance, this is one in a series of clampdowns which has seen the blocking of websites that were perceived to be anti-Islamic, including the Turkish Atheist Association, and the Paris newspaper Charlie Hebdo. Last year, Twitter was already temporarily blocked when recordings that suggested corruption by government officials were being circulated.

Flawed tactics

Unable to censor specific items, the Turkish government has shut down the internet with blanket bans on all local users to certain media sources. This has lead to outrage from the many Turkish citizens not viewing the proscribed content and also lead to international condemnation. Not only that but it fails to address the situation, as the blocks can be circumvented by enabling a VPN which masks the users country of origin, a tactic that has been used successfully in many other countries where regimes have sought to block social media as a means of spreading information.