Turkey's blocking of websites raises doubts about freedom of expression

01/10/2008

Turkey has banned prominent British academic and evolutionist Richard Dawkins' website, the latest of hundreds of controversial internet bans that undermine freedom of expression in the EU candidate country.

By Ayhan Simsek for Southeast European Times -- 01/10/08

Turkish authorities blocked access to British author Richard Dawkins' website. [Getty Images]

An Istanbul court ordered a ban on Turkish access to British author Richard Dawkins' site (www.richarddawkins.net) after controversial Islamist and creationist Adnan Oktar claimed the site libelled his character.

Oktar and his shadowy, well-funded group have been leading campaigners against Darwinism, publishing and distributing thousands of books for free, in Turkey and in more than 50 other countries.

Oktar's book Atlas of Creation received rough treatment on Dawkins' website, where the British academic pointed out errors in its content and attacked Oktar for manipulating facts.

"I am at a loss to reconcile the expensive and glossy production values of this book with the 'breathtaking inanity' of the content," the scientist wrote in July.

While Oktar and his followers won their legal case against Dawkins' website, they failed to ban his prominent book, The God Delusion. The same Istanbul court that blocked his site last month upheld circulation of his book last April, citing freedom of expression.

Dawkins' website is not the only victim of the legal campaign by Oktar's group against Darwinist or atheist sites. Oktar and his followers, exploiting loopholes in Turkish law, managed earlier to obtain temporary bans on leading internet sites, including Google Groups and WordPress blogs, citing alleged insults to Islamist authors.

Authorities have blocked access to Turkish evolutionist websites such as ateizm.org as well. In late September, they also banned the website of a major trade union, the Union of Turkish Educators (Egitim Sen), for publishing criticism 19 months ago of Atlas of Creation.

The controversial Oktar received a three-year prison sentence last May for founding an illegal organisation for personal gain and with criminal intent. He remains free on appeal.

His group's considerable financial backing is mysterious, and the Turkish press often accuses it of secretive, cult-like practices and financial exploitation of its followers.

Turkish media have reacted with outrage to the vaguely justified internet bans. "Take your hands off our internet," the leftist daily Radikal headlined on Tuesday. The daily denounced the blocking of the websites and emphasised that most of the bans did not even result from court rulings, rather from decrees by the country's Telecommunications Directorate.

Turkey's ruling Islamist-rooted Justice and Development Party (AKP) has announced its commitment to the EU accession process and pledged to revive reforms. But recent restrictions on the internet raise significant doubts about that commitment. The AKP rejects charges of a hidden Islamist political agenda and describes itself as a conservative democratic party. Some leading AKP members have publicly disputed evolutionist ideas in the past, but the party has no direct link to Oktar and tries to distance itself from his group.