{"id":754,"date":"2014-08-28T14:36:59","date_gmt":"2014-08-28T14:36:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/covcasbulletin.info\/?p=754"},"modified":"2014-08-29T14:45:09","modified_gmt":"2014-08-29T14:45:09","slug":"turkey-enemy-of-the-internet","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/covcasbulletin.info\/?p=754","title":{"rendered":"Turkey, enemy of the Internet?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Reporters Without Borders<\/em>
\n
\nThe 9th annual Internet Governance Forum will be held in Istanbul from 2 to 5 September. Reporters Without Borders will be there to denounce the increasing violations of freedom of information in Turkey and to argue that respect for this freedom should be at the heart of any Internet governance model.<\/strong><\/p>\n

After the 2012 Internet Governance Forum in Azerbaijan, ranked 160th out of 180 countries in the latest Reporters Without Borders world press freedom index<\/a>, and the 2013 IGF in Indonesia, ranked 132nd, it has fallen to Turkey (154th) to host this year\u2019s IGF.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Launched in 2005 under UN auspices, the annual IGF is supposed to provide a neutral arena where governments, private sector and civil society discuss Internet governance mechanisms. According to paragraph 72 of the \u201cTunis Agenda,\u201d<\/a> the IGF\u2019s mission is to \u201cidentify emerging issues, bring them to the attention of the relevant bodies and the general public, and, where appropriate, make recommendations.\u201d<\/p>\n

In line with this mandate, Reporters Without Borders wants the Turkish government\u2019s assaults on Internet freedom to be raised at the Istanbul IGF.<\/p>\n

Together with Amnesty \u0130nternational, Human Rights Watch, the Turkish Association of Journalists (TGC) and Turkey\u2019s Alternative Informatics Association (Alternatif Bilisim Dernegi), RWB will hold a news conference in Istanbul on 4 September in order to put the alarming decline in freedom of information in Turkey on the IGF agenda.<\/p>\n

The Alternative Informatics Association is also holding a parallel forum, called the Internet Ungovernance Forum<\/a>, in which RWB will take part.<\/p>\n

Turkish society is becoming more and more critical of the authoritarianism of Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who has been prime minister for the past 11 years and who was elected president on 10 August. The scale of the \u201cOccupy Gezi<\/a>\u201d protest movement has been eloquently indicative of civil society discontent with the government\u2019s increasingly repressive tendencies.<\/p>\n

Submitted in December 2013 and adopted in February 2014, amendments to Law 5651 on the Internet<\/a> strengthened the powers of the High Council for Telecommunications (TIB), allowing it to \u201cpreventively\u201d block websites on such vague grounds as the presence of content that is \u201cdiscriminatory or insulting towards certain members of society.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Turkish intelligence agency MIT has also had its powers enhanced by a law<\/a> forcing any individual or entity to surrender data on request, a provision that tramples on the right of journalists to protect the confidentiality of their sources.<\/p>\n

The Turkish government\u2019s ongoing talks with the US company Procera Networks and the Swedish company Netclean<\/a> Technologies about the acquisition of network surveillance software are an additional source of concern.<\/p>\n

In March 2014, on the eve of municipal elections, Turkey joined the small group of countries that have blocked Twitter<\/a> and YouTube<\/a> on a lasting basis. They include such repressive states as China, Iran, Vietnam, Pakistan, North Korea and Eritrea.<\/p>\n

Reporters Without Borders points out that Internet access is recognized as a fundamental right in a 2011 report by the UN special rapporteur<\/a> on freedom of expression, Frank La Rue.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Reporters Without Borders The 9th annual Internet Governance Forum will be held in Istanbul from 2 to 5 September. Reporters Without Borders will be there [more >>>]<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":755,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-754","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-turkey","category-turkey-human-rights"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/covcasbulletin.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/754","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/covcasbulletin.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/covcasbulletin.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/covcasbulletin.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/covcasbulletin.info\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=754"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/covcasbulletin.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/754\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":756,"href":"https:\/\/covcasbulletin.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/754\/revisions\/756"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/covcasbulletin.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/755"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/covcasbulletin.info\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=754"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/covcasbulletin.info\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=754"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/covcasbulletin.info\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=754"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}