YouTube video service unbanned in Turkey

Yes, the people of Turkey can be satisfied - the government of this country decided to unblock the most popular YouTube video service, which has been blocked in this country for about two years. All the fuss broke out because of several videos in which some of the leaders of Turkey, including religious leaders, were mocked. Basically, on YouTube you can find videos of almost any kind, I think that almost every known person or political figure somehow has a caricature counterpart in South Park on YouTube. The government of Turkey asked to remove the clips, which was done.



The other day, the Minister of Transport, which also works with the Internet industry in Turkey, announced that the service is now available for the Turks, since the very materials were removed from the service. It seems that there you can find a lot of other things about Turkey, which the government of this country may not particularly like, but so far, so good, and YouTube is working in Turkey. The blocking of the service has affected so many users so much that in Turkey almost staged a strike. In the end, the president of this country ordered to solve the problem, which was done, though not very quickly.

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Now, representatives of the Turkish authorities are showing hope that "YouTube will work in our country within the framework of our laws." Well, hoping that all videos that somehow violate Turkish laws will be removed in time is a bit naive. Although, recently, YouTube has achieved impressive success in the removal of unwanted content. Now the service is already available to a number of Turkish users, most likely, in a couple of days access will be open to all regions of the country.



Interestingly, the videos were not removed by the service workers, but, apparently, by the authors of these materials - in any case, YouTube claims that the materials were not deleted at the initiative of the service.



Interestingly, back in 2007, a law was passed in Turkey, according to which any site that would be declared unsatisfactory to Turkish laws may be blocked by the Turkish government. The number of inappropriate content includes ordinary topics, such as child pornography or prostitution. But there are also specific ones: violation of the religious feelings of the Turks, ridicule of the leaders of this country. As a result of the work of this law, about five thousand websites were blocked in Turkey, and the OSCE representatives are very unhappy.



Via CNET