What is happening in Turkey?

This weekend I read an article titled “Turkey to maintain YouTube block despite ‘free speech’ ruling” written by the Autonomous Nonprofit Organization “TV-Novosti”. I found this article on http://rt.com/news/turkey-not-unblock-youtube-608/ and it was published on April 10, 2014. This article is about the Turkish government banning social media websites from the country and the civilian protests against these social media website bans.

On March 26, the Turkish government was persuaded to remove the block on Twitter due to a court ruling that the block violated the right of speech. On March 27, the Turkish government shut off access to YouTube. Recep Tayyip Erdogan feels that the Twitter ruling was incorrect and actually pledged to wipe the website in his campaign speech. During the elections in March there were protests that resulted in violence and police officers had to fight off protestors with tear gas and water cannons. As a result, 8 people died. Erdogan’s party won the elections.

 On April 9 (after the YouTube shut off), the court of Turkey ruled that the block of  YouTube is also a violation right of speech and suggested only blocking some videos on the website if the government feels it is necessary. Despite this ruling and additional advice, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan maintains the website block because of ‘illegal content’ on YouTube.

This information is very disappointing because social media is a part of our right of speech and press and citizens of Turkey are being robbed of it. It also seems that the Prime Minister of Turkey is set on keeping it that way which is wrong. The Prime Minister of Turkey in blocking social media websites against court ruling is also illegal on top of being horribly unjust. If the Prime Minister of Turkey is not impeached soon, then he might start taking away more rights and start slowly becoming a dictator.

I know this may seem like I’m jumping to conclusions. It is just some social media websites. It isn’t like he is killing anybody. Except, 8 people have died in protests during his election and social media is where people share their opinions about school, religion; politics. No more social media means that there are no more people learning what the outside world is saying about the prime minister and his history. Maybe there is nothing that the prime minister is trying to hide and he’s a nice person who doesn’t like children tweeting all the time. However, just before YouTube was shut down on March 26, a video about Turkish military involvement in Syria was leaked via social media.