Access to certain Google services blocked from Turkey

Statement by Dr. Yaman Akdeniz, Associate Professor, Human Rights Law Research Center, Faculty of Law, Istanbul Bilgi University, and Director of Cyber-Rights.Org. (lawya@cyber-rights.org)

The situation in terms of Internet censorship has moved from BAD to WORSE in Turkey as the Telecommunications Communication Presidency (TIB) asked the Turkish Internet Service Providers to block access to certain IP addresses associated with YouTube.

As it is well know access to YouTube has been blocked from Turkey since May 2008, and DNS-poisoning method has been used until very recently. However, as of yesterday TIB asked the Turkish ISPs to block access to certain IP addresses associated with YouTube. The ISPs then started warning their users that as a result of the most recent IP blocking certain Google services may also be affected.

Since last night a considerable number of Google related services have been affected from Turkey. These are:

http://code.google.com

http://pages.google.com

http://video.google.com

http://translate.google.com.tr

http://docs.google.com

http://sites.google.com

http://books.google.com

http://chrome.google.com

http://sketchup.google.com

http://froogle.google.com

http://labs.google.com

http://mars.google.com

http://moon.google.com

http://notebook.google.com

http://toolbar.google.com

http://browsersync.google.com

http://catalog.google.com

http://codesearch.google.com

http://dir.google.com

http://earth.google.com

http://groups.google.com.tr

http://shopping.google.com

http://sky.google.com

http://support.google.com

http://tools.google.com

http://wap.google.com

http://answers.google.com

http://google-analystics.com

The above services are not completely blocked but users are reporting that they either cannot access them or access is really slow. My own tests from two different ISPs confirmed the situation.

This is an unacceptable side effect to the Turkish authorities desire to block access to YouTube. The latest disproportionate action can only be described as censorship and remains unacceptable in a democratic society. The blocking of websites that carry legal content such as YouTube and all the above mentioned Google related services could be incompatible with Article 10, and could be regarded as a serious infringement on freedom of speech, and too far-reaching than reasonably necessary in a democratic society.