Some time ago, I blogged about Turkey’s censorship on social media, mostly because Turkey’s prime minister Erdogan got caught in scandal.
Turkey’s court system took up the issue. They ruled in favor of…the people! They ruled the ban on social media sites like You Tube violates human rights. Twitter was included in this social media ban, but Turkey’s Constitutional Court ruled that ban violated the nation’s laws. The court in Ankara said the You Tube ban was too broad and instead of blocking the whole website, it just allowed the blocking of 15 videos. But Prime Minister Erdogan is hardly backing down. According to Reuters, Erdogan says he will comply, but doesn’t respect the ruling.
At this point, who cares what Erdogan respects? I’m sorry if that sounds harsh, but anybody with that much leadership and authority who would censor all of social media to cover his own foul ups will get little respect from me. I do have respect for the Turkish court system. They listened to the people. You think the people wanted their social media shut down? They didn’t. They painted graffiti I.P. addresses for people to get to their social media addresses. So I salute the Turkish people and courts for taking a stand against censorship and borderline tyranny. What can other nations learn from Turkey?