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Kurdistan related websites blocked in
Turkey
15.1.2007 |
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January 15, 2007
Van, Doğubayazit, Eastern-Turkey,
A black humorist named his business the Virus
Internet Café. It is located down a side street in
Doğubayazıt, and is heated by a woodstove; still,
everybody keeps his winter jacket on. Trying to log
onto Kurdish Web sites such as kurdmedia.com,
interkurd.com and more other Kurdish websites or
undertaking a Wikipedia search for “Kurdistan” all
generate the following message: “Bu Sayfa Yasak
Siteler Listesinde Kayıtlı ve Bloklandı.”
Translation: “This site is listed as forbidden and
has been blocked.”
Reporters sans Frontières, the independent advocacy
group that campaigns for and monitors freedom of the
press, reports that in Turkey “Cybercafé owners were
ordered in December 2003 to install filters to block
access to pornographic Web sites and to prevent
their premises being used to promote gambling,
pornography, political separatism or any challenge
to the structure of the state. Two-thirds of
Internet activity in Turkey occurs through the
country's 15,000 or so cybercafés.”
At mayor Kubilay's house, DTP officials demonstrated
how satellite television signals from Kurdish
channels ROJ and Mesopotamia were blocked. “But not
in the villages, only in the cities,” a DTP official
said. “Because people in the cities know what they
can do,” he explained, somewhat conspiratorially.
The Turkish, EU, U.K., and U.S. governments allege
that Danish-based ROJ is a “mouthpiece” of the
illegal Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), an issue
that made headlines in 2005 when Turkish Prime
Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan boycotted a news
conference with Danish Prime Minister Anders Fogh
Rasmussen because a reporter from ROJ would be
attending.
Interior Ministry looking
into Kurdish language on Diyarbakir Municipal web
site
Officials from the Turkish Interior Ministry are
looking into a recent publication in Kurdish which
was made on the Diyarbakir Municipality's web site.
A statement by Diyarbakir Mayor Osman Baydemir was
taken by Interior Ministry inspectors regarding the
city's municipal web site, although a separate
statement by the Diyarbakir Municipality recalled
that the city's official web site had been published
in Turkish, English, and Kurdish for awhile now.
Source: turkishdailynews com.tr | hurriyet com.tr
The use of the term "Kurdistan" is vigorously
rejected due to its alleged political implications
by the Republic of Turkey, which does not recognize
the existence of a "Turkish Kurdistan"
Southeast Turkey. The Kurds have no rights in
Turkey.
Others estimate as many as 40 million Kurds live in
Big Kurdistan (Iraq, Turkey, Syria, Iran, Armenia),
which covers an area as big as France, about half of
all Kurds which estimate to 20 million live in
Turkey.
The Kurdish flag flown officially in Iraqi Kurdistan but
unofficially flown by Kurds in Armenia. The flag is
banned in Iran, Syria, and Turkey where flying it is
a criminal offence"
Southeastern Turkey:
North Kurdistan (
Kurdistan-Turkey) wikipedia
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