54 thoughts on “WordPress is blocked by Turkey(s): a blogger’s revenge plan of action”

1. Pingback: Turk 182 « Frontier Former Editor

2. Hey–why not tip off the Intelligent Design Institute that a Muslim is stealing their ideas? That way maybe they’ll all sue each other into non-existence.

   Thinking about puns … Oktar-pus?

3. Most of the turkish websites are talking about this and are all trying to find a solution. Also Flickr blog is now banned too. Citizens in Turkey do not have access to this blog. Which is real lame.
   they cant get my wep side as well

4. or something more Labelle like – gitze gitze Yahya heeahh

5. LOL. That’s a little more in line with his style it seems, FFE.

6. Pingback: Information wants to be free… « Bridlepath

7. Flickr, too? Hilarious: thanks for that info. Soon enough it will occur to them that they should just ban written communication and images entirely, and POOF, problem solved. Nobody has to bomb them back into the Stone Age. It appears that they’re crawling there themselves.

8. I am Edip Yuksel, who is mentioned by Adnan Oktar and his followers.

   First, I would like to command you for your standing for our right to be free of government censorships. Adnan Oktar who uses the name Harun Yahya and puts it on the books written (mostly plagiarized) by his followers, is not a private citizen. He is a public figure, and a terrible one, and should be the subject of a less legal protection from public criticism.

   Adnan Oktar is a cult leader who have enslaved many children of rich and elite. His sexual and mental abuse of his subjects is a well known fact to Turkish people. His confession in police alone, which is corroborated by his former followers to details, is sufficient to put him behind bars. But so far, money, connections, blackmail and all the tricks available to his wellconnected and super rich followers have kept him out of trouble. But his days are numbered and now there is a major case against him in Turkish courts for black mail and illegal activities.

   He has censored hundreds, yes hundreds of websites exposing his abusive dealings in his cult. By using backward laws in Turkish legal system, he was able to ban my site. Though I hired an attorney in Turkey from Arizona, and though I transferred the article from http://www.19.org (which was very popular among progressive minded muslims in Turkey) to another site, and though my attorney removed the court’s order for ban, yes despite all of those, his cult was able to use their informants and connections in Turkish Telecom to keep my site blocked for Turkish population.

   I am a Turkish author and escaped to the United State for my freedom of expression. Unfortunately, during my last visit I had to appear at the Turkish court because Adnan and his followers sued me for frivolous claims. They tried their best to make me get arrested. They even used their trolls at airport police station to stop me from coming back my home in the USA. After I left Turkey, they submitted to Turkish prosecutors some of my article critical of repressive laws, Turkish military’s meddling with politics, and racist policies against Kurds. I recently learned that, upon this audacious cult’s campaign against me, there are now several charges against me in Turkish courts, and I am sought by police.

   Below is the article that has made the paranoid cult leader so furious, leading him to put me on the top of his long list “enemies.” (The article is now posted at the following site and is blocked to Turkish population: http://www.yahyaharun.com ).

   Harun Yahya or Adnan Oktar: The Promised Mahdi?
   by Edip Yuksel

   The following article is mostly a personal criticism of a public figure. However, I am not committing the logical fallacy known as ad hominem, since the attack is relevant to the argument and is justified. After reading the article, you will decide it for yourself.

   Adan Oktar, who later started using the nickname Harun Yahya, was my apprentice in mid 1980’s. In our first meeting, I was a famous Sunni author and political activist, and he was an unknown Sunni zealot influenced by the books of the Kurdish Mullah, Said Nursi. At that time, my books were making editions after editions and I had hundreds of thousands readers, yet I had no special group of mine. He was not famous then, but he had a few dozen followers among university students. He was in his late twenties, a college drop-out, unemployed, and was living with his mother in an apartment located in a middle class neighborhood at Ortakoy, Istanbul. He had a long black beard, soft voice, smiling face, childish jokes, and most importantly a well calculated plan for his assumed mission.

   Adnan was mixing mysticism with scientific rhetoric and presenting it gently and in a modern fashion to the children of the privileged class, without intimidating them. He was a refined and urbanized version of Said Nursi. Ironically, unlike beardless Said, he was fond of his well-groomed stylish beard. (Religious clerics, on the other hand, managed to grow ugly-looking beards by cutting their mustache short and shaving their hair, resembling Franciscan monks). This proved to be a magic solution. He would always keep a certain distance between himself and his followers and would treat them as if they were his children, though he was only seven or ten years older than them. He would pat the heads of his young pupils and encourage them to work for the mission and they would accept this charming and patronizing treatment with delight. He was targeting the university students and especially the handsome children of the rich and affluent. They would pull each other to the circle.

   Meanwhile, when I was doing my mandatory military service in Samsun in 1986, I started communicating with Rashad Khalifa. After several rounds of hot snail-mail discussions and upon reading his landmark book, Quran, Hadith, and Islam, I decided to dedicate my religion to God alone. I shared my newly discovered faith with my close friends, including Adnan Oktar. He was very receptive. He would frequently ask me questions and convey the information to his followers. He was trying his best to keep our meetings secret from his followers. Then I did not know the reason, and I did not care much. I thought he was considering my style too bold and my culture too rural. He was right: when discussing political or religious issues, I did not care much about people’s cloths, wealth, or their personal feelings. But in retrospect I know the real reason behind this secrecy: he was thinking that my presence would jeopardize his charisma and dilute his influence over them. He wanted his followers to think that he was receiving a special information or inspiration from God. He did not know Arabic but he was clever enough to dupe the unquestioning gullible followers and give them the impression that he knew a lot. He was considering me as a potential rival in his mission.

   To my dismay, later I discovered that his interest in the message was not prompted by his philosophical quest for truth but by his pragmatic strategy for his political ambitions. He thought that he could use it easily to attract the children of the rich people who had modern life style and culture that was incompatible with the medieval Arab culture which was promoted by the teachings of Hadith and Sunna. He was extremely obsessed with recruiting the handsome children of the rich people wearing expensive cloths. He was not interested in guiding poor people.

   After discovering his intention and his deep belief that he was the promised MAHDI, I cut my relationship with him in 1988. Soon after this, he turned back to his Sunni roots and market. To expose his real face, I had secretly recorded one of my last conversations with him, but later I gave up releasing it. I just did not feel comfortable with the secrecy of my act. I had given the tape to Mustafa and Yelda Sahin, two of his former followers. However, after I was forced to immigrate and start a new life in America, I learned that the tape was handed to Girisim, an Islamist magazine directed by Mehmet Metiner. The magazine published the transcript to warn Sunni Muslims against Adnan’s Machiavellian politics. In the taped conversation I was reprimanding him for cooperating with Sheikh Nazim of Cyprus who had influence among some wealthy British Muslims. He was apologetic and was justifying his relationship for purposes of using Nazim’s influence. I warned him against for such tactics, since I always believed that honesty is a necessary characteristic of being a Muslim. The transcript of this conversation is available on the Internet and was also posted in Turkish forum of http://www.19.org or at http://www.kurannesli.org/bilgibankasi/yazi.asp?id=441 A funny portion of the conversation reveals the childish tactics used by Adnan Oktar to recruit members for his cult. In that portion I was criticizing him for preferring the wealthy. (The transcript refers to Adnan Octar with acronym A.H. for Adnan Hoca, pronounced Hodja, meaning religious teacher):

   A.H.- For instance we purchase a shirt, paying five times more. When the guys see the shirt they come after us.

   E.Y.- Alright, I understand; but a person coming because of a shirt will escape because of another shirt.

   A.H.- No, they cannot escape; they cannot escape!

   Unveiling Adnan’s secret relationship with me and his hypocrisy in his relation with Sunni leaders, in a normal world would mean that he would too be the target of a major attack, threats and excommunication. Surprisingly, despite this scandal, he continued to become a rising star in Sunni market. He was once secretly teaching his followers that Mustafa Kamal Ataturk was the prophesized DAJJAL (deceptor) and later he embraced him for political reasons and declared him a great hero. He is now playing a double game: to appease the Turkish oligarchy he is exploiting Ataturk-worship, and to exploit the Muslim market he is indirectly giving the message that Ataturk was a disbeliever. He played the game of double-speak pretty successfully so far. Adnan has danced among many contradictory positions, but the single conviction he has maintained since early 1980s is “Adnan Oktar is the promised MAHDI.”

   When I was trying to convince him about the message of the Quran Alone he did not insist nor even defended any traditional Sunni precepts, with the exception of hadiths about Mahdi. It amazed me for a short while to see him trying to strike a compromise with me regarding this issue. He wanted me to accept his conversion to the Quran Alone together with his belief about the promised Mahdi. I tried to tell him that the Hadiths about Mahdi were among the most fabricated and unreliable Hadiths, even according to the lousy standards of Hadith experts; they were fabricated by the supporters of Umayyad and Abbasid dynasties to promote the interest of the sultans. To him MAHDI (that is his leadership) was the most important subject. His take on Masons and Zionists is just a strategy to get him an international fame and popularity to finally announce his mission to the world. His cult resembles the modus operandi of Moon or Scientology cult: targeting affluent people and exploiting their resources.

   We met each other in prison too. In December 3, 1986 I was imprisoned second time for promoting a theocratic revolution in Turkey via the first volume of my best-selling book, Interesting Questions. Though I had written that book before my conversion from Sunni Islam to monotheistic islam, the book was not reflecting my hard core revolutionary ideology; it contained some mild hints and innuendos. But, this was sufficient for the government to imprison me since (unaware of my radical transformation) they were trying to deter me from engaging in open and underground political activities.

   I met Adnan in the prison clinic. I was taken there by the doctor who happened to recognize me from my books and conferences; he wanted to save me from the crowded ward which was filled with convicted murderers and burglars. Adnan was there for a different reason, a much different one. He was acting like a paranoid schizophrenic in order to get medical report to dodge the draft. It was ironic, since he was indeed mentally sick; he was a delusional megalomaniac, yet he was cunningly acting for another mental illness. He was successful; he dodged the draft and since then he has been found lacking mental capability to be the subject of criminal law. So, he is getting away with sexual abuses, fraud, libel, blackmailing schemes, and other criminal activities. If Adnan has demonstrated a miracle as a Mahdi, this must be his miracle: he is officially insane and criminally teflon!

   Though Adnan is a lay person by academic standards, he is a gifted manipulator, a patient and highly skilled team manager: he uses various highly efficient psychological devises and marketing gimmicks to depict his image as a divinely ordained leader with a great mission. It would be in the best interest of the naïve and young pupils to join his cause, since soon he will be ruling the entire world and they would be his lucky and powerful aids. Besides, the cult provides a holy club for the children of the rich and well connected; they also get second-hand girls as a fringe benefit. In turn they lose their freedom and part of their identity; but we know that millions of people are ready to trade those precious rights and values to join a cult or a religious organization. Though the dates for victory he has given have been extended several times, who would not be the secretary or the spoke person of the long-awaited great ruler of the entire world? If it is not in 1999, then the victory would come in 2005, or in 2014…. The Jehovah Witnesses have extended the end of the world several times in a century, and Adnan, as I know him, is no less talented than them. After his death, his followers will have enough experience to keep the enthusiasm of the army of the Mahdi until the end of the world! An army comprising of rich, educated and devoted cult members who are experts in cutting and pasting, clipping and editing, in putting together the plagiarized pieces like a jig saw puzzle, and are generous in presenting them to masses under the name of their leader, yes this army is a powerful force. But, there is always the risk of getting into a holy fight for leadership after the Mahdi.

   Adnan’s relation with me became the topic of articles and political analyses in Turkish media, books and magazines (for instance, see Ayet ve Slogan by Ruþen Çakýr, a prominent Turkish journalist), and his frequent turns and twists have been well documented in Turkish media, such as Hurriyet, Milliyet, Radikal, Sabah newspapers. Many of his followers left him with disappointment; but each time a group left him, he was somehow able to maintain his cult by attracting fresh blood from gullible youth ready to become the future rulers of the globe as Mahdi’s close assistants. His former followers were intimidated and blackmailed in sophisticated ways and occasionally in Mafia style. They work like a professional intelligence agency with covert operations and misinformation campaigns. Their habit of getting what they want via blackmail, slander and libel put them in trouble with high ranking Turkish politicians several years ago. As I said above, Adnan showed his miracle: his medical report regarding his mental illness not only saved him from mandatory military service but also from the criminal prosecutions.

   Adnan is not formally educated, neither in science nor in religion, and he is not capable to understand the depth of subjects that are presented in books and videos carrying his nick name. Therefore, you never see him in public debating with experts. A single public discussion on a TV channel would be enough to turn him to the proverbial Naked King. And he may consider this article as my challenge for him: I am ready to meet him in a live debate on TV.

   Adnan uses proxies and gets credit for everything. He uses his medical report and gets away for any criminal charge. There are a lot to learn from Adnan Oktar or the exploiter of the names of two messengers of God, Harun and Yahya! His followers, mostly educated and rich, yet gullible youngsters, work day and night to prepare books and videos mostly plagiarized from works of western scientists and artists. In the end, those collaborative and plagiarized works are all together credited to Harun Yahya. Thus, Harun Yahya is a brand name, an artificial name aimed to boost the personal agenda of Adnan Oktar. For instance, in 1990’s many of the books credited to him were written by his former follower Metin Kimildar who also used the nick name Cavit Yalçin. (Where are you Cavit Yalçin now?! Are you now renting your nick name as a portal for Harun Yahya’s websites or is it taken away from you?). His former student MA, who has long time declared his freedom from the Adnan Oktar wrote most of the books on Evolution. Unfortunately, MA’s books are published under the pen name Harun Yahya and credited to Adnan Oktar. Like many of Adnan’s former students who know well the dirty tricks of their former master, MA too is trying to forget the days when he was a young and naive university student.

   Adnan Oktar strongly believes that he is the MAHDI (the Sunni and Shiite imitation of Messiah) and he has a powerful charisma, the pool of unlimited gullible rich people and a market of more than a billion individuals easily impressed by the work of his followers.

   Knowing him before 1990s, I could not believe that he would be indulging in promiscuous sexual activities, since at that time he was a devout Sunni who was very scrupulous about interacting with women. He would not even shake hands with women. However, according to the media reports and published confessions of his former followers, Adnan has evolved and transformed since. His sexual abuse of girls around him has been the frequent topic of Turkish media and acknowledged by the defectors. He reportedly claims right to have sexual intercourse with every female member of his cult. He has even invented a name for those females: MOTOR (engine). Reportedly, his male followers are feeling lucky in letting him taste their girl friends first.

   For recruiting new members and promoting his brand name, he uses sex, money, popular symbols, and famous people. But the main tool he uses is deception, yet I think he does the deception “righteously”, that is for a good end! He justifies his deceptive propaganda by the abused Quranic word TAQIYYA (this holy hypocrisy is a part of belief system of Shiite sect!) After learning Rashad’s claim of messengership and his argument regarding the definition of Rasul and Nabi, Adnan assumed to be a messenger and expressed this belief to his closest circle. I think later, to be able to access the one-billion-head Muslim market, he went back to his original claim of MAHDI. There he could exploit to the bone. (But, his picking Harun Yahya as his nickname indicates his deep belief in his messengership. Why? Well, here is a clue: because of his ignorance of the Quran, he thinks that Harun was not given any book, so according to him Harun was a messenger but not a prophet!)

   It is a shame to see modern Muslims are duped by this cult leader like their ancestors duped by Ebu Hurayra and the ilk, and it is a shame that the books and videos falsely attributed to him are so popular in Muslim bookstores like the hadith books falsely attributed to Muhammad are so popular. These books and videos are mostly plagiarized collections of western work that mixes truth with falsehood. Science is mixed with pseudo-science, such as ignorant criticisms of the theory of evolution. The message of the Quran is mixed with fabricated hadith, such as the identity and adventures of the Mahdi.

   Knowing the history and the success of many delusional people among the gullible, the popularity and success of this man is no surprise.

   PS: Adnan Oktar has sued me in a Turkish court for defamation. Through his attorneys he asked me to delete this article from the world of Internet. I rejected his request, since I can prove every claim in this article through media and live witness testimony.

   For information about our philosophical and political position, see:

   http://www.yuksel.org
   http://www.19.org
   http://www.islamicreform.org
   http://www.brainbowpress.org

9. I am glad to see you posting here. Whether or not Oktar was defamed, the solution is not the enforced silence of a million and a half innocent bloggers; the solution is to meet you like a man and get over the idea that anyone can control what anyone else says. The solution to a bad reputation is exemplary behavior, and that, it appears, is entirely foreign to Oktar.

10. Pingback: Wordpress blocked in Turkey « pixelisation

11. Pingback: Adnan Oktar « THX 1138

12. Pingback: Wiesci » Blog Archive » Adnan Oktar

13. Rain,

    I wrote about this on Guardian’s Comment is Free.

    http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/ali_eteraz/2007/08/shooting_the_messenger.html

14. Emailed you back. Thanks for that. Strange; the whole issue hasn’t really been picked up in the press, despite the fact that a lot of journalists have their blogs here.

15. Pingback: Harun Yahya Gets Wordpress Banned in Turkey « Ali Eteraz

16. And thanks for that, too.

    Hey, just noticed my pagerank has gone down to zero. Whiskey tango foxtrot: are they running it through a Turkish datacenter?

17. What bunch of political bullshit.
    Edip Yuksel should say how he really feels. {what a quintessential gasbag}
    Let’s all bone up on some Xtra strength Beano and call the doctor in the morning . . .
    Sheesh
    ~m

18. I say we all pitch in five bucks and buy Adnan Oktar the most powerful enema the universe has ever seen.

19. or hire Mike Tyson to bite off his ear . . .

20. We can get that done for free. Just don’t feed Tyson for a day or so and turn him loose.

21. Pingback: Archwium Blogów » Blog Archive » Adnan Oktar

22. Pingback: First sign of Islamist censorship in the secular Turkey? « istanbul despatches

23. Pingback: First sign of Islamist censorship in secular Turkey? « istanbul despatches

24. Canada banner’s up!

    Support free speech in Turkey: download any of these banners and put them on your sites!

25. Thank you!

26. This is interesting. Personally I try to stay away from Harun Yahya and Edip Yuksel as they both are trying to promote their own version of religion. Harun Yahya according to Edip Yuksel is claiming to be Mahdi and I will not at all be surprised if Edip Yuksel declared himself the Prophet.

    Edip Yuksel and Haroon Yahya or Adnan Okhtar are intelligent educated persons who are after fame and fortune with exploiting common Muslims. They know how profitable Religion business is.

    So F*k Adnan Okhtar and Edip Yuksel.

    PS: I don’t care if you banned me from Turkey.

27. I care. In fact, I don’t care about Adnan Okhtar or Edip Yuksel. I care only about the free speech of over a million bloggers being squashed, and the freedom to read of millions of Turks being destroyed, all by a petty attempt to control what other people say about you. That’s not just a crime; no matter what your religion, it’s a sin.

    Face it: if you didn’t care, you wouldn’t be comment #26 in this thread, would you? You’d be comment #4 in “weirdest. penis. ev-ar.” But you’re not.

28. Rain Coaster

    What I mean is that really don’t care much about censorship. I have been censored on BBC CNN and plenty of Muslim countries websites and banned on many religious scholars websites. This pissed me off so much that I really don’t care much about these morons. People have the right to freedom of speech which is not very liked practice in Muslim countries.

    So I really don’t care much about the majority of these people like Adnan Okhtar (Harun Yahya) and Edip Yuksel.

29. Heck, I’ve been censored in Canada, England and the US. You’re just getting started!

30. Nice to see this going…

    Thanks for posting my post Rain (istanbul despatches), which is actually more of a thank you to Ali Eteraz as that piece was merely highlighting his article in the “commentisfree” section of Guardian Unlimited… which is just my latest in a series on the WP block since it went off last Friday, Aug. 17.

    As a Brit WP blogger based in istanbul, I urge you all to rant on this one anywhere and by any means possible. I’ve been banging on about this one on citizen journo site NowPublic.com…

    http://www.nowpublic.com/first-sign-islamist-censorship-secular-turkey
    (with much respect to Ali Eteraz)

    http://www.nowpublic.com/islamic-creationist-blocks-wordpress-turkey

    http://www.nowpublic.com/wordpress-com-blocked-turkey

    …which is garnering a healthy amount of attention there. Please feel free to follow the links and vent your spleen!

    As for some of the stuff above, and in the interests of balance… well, I am in Istanbul, Turkey, and I can tell you Flickr is not blocked. Maybe one particular blog/page there is, but there is no prob with general access to the site…

    That said, this page in particular brings up a “server not found” message, which suggests that raincoaster.com, while not the subject of an official block, IS being FILTERED — as is often the case in these things. (I’m accessing this via TOR, the only way around this shit!)… which also implies, if Edip Yuksel is correct, that someone in Turk Telekom — the privately-owned but ONLY telecoms provider here — is looking after Adnan Oktar’s interests…

    …as was probably the case when the story first broke on WP founder developer Matt Mulenweg’ s personal blog, with one Emre Sevince’s unsubstantiated claim it was all a technical error with a Turk Telekom employee trying to block one solitary “military-related” blog (http://photomatt.net/2007/08/17/blocked-in-turkey/#comment-424503)…

    Another Oktar follower?

    Uou can see how messy this really is…

    Finally though: This isn’t down to one man’s doing at the end of the day. What is really the issue here is the crazy Turkish legal system that allows legally unproven claims to take precedence over all else. Basically a case of shoot first, ask questions later!

    Keep it up — make it LOUD!

31. I’m doing my best. I emailed Guido Fawkes and Iain Dale in the UK and left a challenge on Boris Johnson’s blog (which he really should respond to, what with being a Turko-American and all). And I emailed it to Ali Eteraz, and you saw what he did with it.

    If we encourage people on other platforms to offend this anal-retentive ninny, then he’ll have to go to court to block them too and I would love to see him try that. Eteraz put it in the Guardian. Will someone put it in the New York Times? The Washington Post? Wired don’t count worth shit; we need the mainstream.

    Hello? Globe and Mail?

32. Pingback: Turcia baneaza Wordpress.com | de ce? blog

33. Sigh … Turkey lives uncomfortably as an attempt at a secular society containing an uncomfortable number of religious folk. Fortunately the tension between religious groups has, until lately, tended to keep the place in some sort of balance.

    One would think that the country would welcome blogging as a chance to move beyond all that, or at least to raise some sort of honest public debate.

    Still, censorship of such will eventually have the same effect.

34. Pingback: Global Voices Online » Turkey: wordpress.com ban inspires firestorm of criticism

35. Pingback: Turkey: wordpress.com ban inspires firestorm of criticism at Global Voices Advocacy

36. All for free speech! And thanks Kyla for the banner!

37. Pingback: Fight for free speech « Pimp My Mac

38. It’s spreading. Started Friday. We’ll see how long it lasts.

39. FYI, there’s a petition about it here:

    http://www.mideastyouth.com/petitions/view_petition/PET13433106/Petition_to_Unblock_WordPress_in_Turkey.htm

40. Knowing a bit from the first hand experience with the Turkish judicial system and the bureaucracy , I blamed primarily the system in this ostensibly minor event turning into a saga. It appears now that there is enough blame to go around including possibly the WP which I held blameless so far (see for ex. “WordPress banned in Turkey: a case of throwing the baby with the bath-water“).

    Perusing through some of the comments on the matter it appears that some of the commenters have an ax to grind with Adnan Oktar (a.k.a. Harun Yahya) . They make his an issue of creationism versus evolutionism, which it should not be. The position Matt seems to be taking is that it is a free exchange of information in the internet , as parti of fundamental right of free speech.

    This is certainly a view held by many including myself in principle. However the matter gets a bit thorny when you get into the limits, boundaries of the exercise of such right. That is why we have caseloads before the courts dealing with issues such as slander, defamation, libel, trademarks, copyrights and so on, -some of which are involved in this case. I am not going to attempt to sort out all the legal and moral issues and heir ramifications in this case. All I am trying o do is to invite all concerned to differentiate between personal dislike for a person, or opposition to his views on certain matters and justice.

    I understand the predicament Matt and WP finds themselves in. They see the issue as an undemocratic justice system and an individual with strong arming the system to demand immunity from criticism. They are taking a stand on the side of the free speech. I urge them however to go beyond that reflexive behavior and engage in a bit deeper analysis of what Edip Yuksel is doing , and whether he is going over the bounds vis-a-vis the free speech. He has made a name for himself for attacking various religious persons, institutions and values sacred to others. I do not contest his right to be wrong , but I am also cognizant of the fact that WP does render judgement on suitability of the content of the blogs. The method Edip Yuksel is employing , specifically targeting another individual, and inviting others to abuse the blogging system with multiple blogs directed at the same purpose should also be questioned. WP cannot judge the veracity of all accusations in millions of pages of content, however it can place certain limits such as selection of blog names etc, as it does in the terms of service it is offering. Edip Yuksel and others should also be mindful of the fact that they have the right to free speech but exercising it on WP is a privilege.

41. I think if two people have a dispute, and if one obtains a judgement against another relating to that dispute, the issue is between those two people. The issue is not between WordPress and the Turkish and Albanian peoples. That is a far larger injustice than any which may have been done to either of the original parties in the dispute.

    That there are two theologians who insult one another and who don’t get along? This surprises no one. As the immortal Murphy Brown said: That’s not a story, it’s a given!

    That their personal spat should deprive millions of people of the freedom to read, and 1.5 million of the freedom to express themselves in Turkey (although they do so within the law!) is the real issue, and a real and powerful evil.

42. Pingback: Readers Edition » Türkei sperrt Wordpress, “Gender-Apartheid” und Prostitution in Indien - Bürgerjournalismus weltweit

43. First WP, then Flickr Blog, now CNN (Well, CNN Political Ticker, actually):

    http://jimcolella.wordpress.com/2007/08/30/now-its-cnn-blocked-in-turkey-2/

    Keep the noise loud and proud. Good work Rain re: the embassy letter.

44. Pingback: And if you’ve got nothing better to do . . . . « Frontier Former Editor

45. Very well said, this is an abhorrent injustice to the people of the countries involved and a grave disservice to freedom of information everywhere. I am appalled that this is transpiring in a government which has been praised for progressivism in some other matters. There are a lot of excellent comments and suggestions here–I’m just learning of this.

46. Welcome back, Curtis. Here’s your first issue!

47. Pingback: Gobbling Up Freedom of Information, One Iron-Fisted Act of Censorship at a Time « Can’t See the Forest

48. Today, http://www.ateizm1.org web site was blocked by Harun Yahya and his collaborators in the Turkish justice system.

    http://www.ateizm1.org is a Turkish web site about atheism, religions, philosophy and science.

    As a member of this well moderated web site, I see no justification for this court decision.

    So much for free speech in Turkey!

49. Listem, I am blogging from Istanbul. Until 3 days ago I could not access WP, but suddently the open wi-fi network I use lets me in… What’s happenend? Anyone know? Have they removed the ban? I have not been able to find anything about it and I am not a Turkish speaker

50. Don’t know. I would expect that the news will turn up if they’ve removed the ban, but maybe the ISP just changed hands. University networks, for instance, can get WP.com with no problems.

51. I am Edip Yuksel, who is mentioned by Adnan Oktar and his followers.

    First, I would like to command you for your standing for our right to be free of government censorships. Adnan Oktar who uses the name Harun Yahya and puts it on the books written (mostly plagiarized) by his followers, is not a private citizen. He is a public figure, and a terrible one, and should be the subject of a less legal protection from public criticism.

    Adnan Oktar is a cult leader who have enslaved many children of rich and elite. His sexual and mental abuse of his subjects is a well known fact to Turkish people. His confession in police alone, which is corroborated by his former followers to details, is sufficient to put him behind bars. But so far, money, connections, blackmail and all the tricks available to his http://misogi.ru/ wellconnected and super rich followers have kept him out of trouble. But his days are numbered and now there is a major case against him in Turkish courts for black mail and illegal activities.

52. Pingback: FIRST SIGN OF ISLAMIST CENSORSHIP IN SECULAR TURKEY? | İSTANBUL DESPATCH

53. nice info thank you, Turkish telecom is very dangerus :)

54. Tenha cuidado, em não praticar estas técnicas durante uma ereção total(pinto duro).

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