There’s been quite a discussion going on in my personal blog about the fact that all of WordPress.com has been blocked by Turkey.
Lots of people, including us, are confused and indignant about this wholesale censorship. Last night we received a letter from the person claiming to be responsible for the block, which in the interest of the community I’m going to publish in its entirety here:
Dear Sir,
We have applied to you to remove the unlawful statements regarding my client Mr. Adnan Oktar (who is the author of the books written under the pen name Harun Yahya) in your blogs. The number of our attempts to inform and warn you regarding these defamation blogs must have been at least twenty, many times through your support page, a couple of times to your legal department and we even sent a regular mail to Mr. Matt Mullenweg. Most of our attempts were unanswered.
These defamation blogs contained slanders to some of my client’s friends as well. They also applied WordPress.com support with their official ID cards and a representative directed them to write to the legal department. So they did but again no response from legal.
So we have become obliged to apply to Turkish judicial courts to stop this defamation executed through your services. By the decision of Fatih 2nd Civil Court of First Instance, number 2007/195, access to WordPress.com has been blocked in Turkey.
The organization, which is led by Edip Yuksel, responsible for these defamation blogs in question are currently up for crimes such as “building an organization to commit crime” in Turkey. The sites of Edip Yuksel, http://www.yahyaharun.com, http://www.19.org, http://www.calinmisgenclik.com and also the blog under your site with the user name http://adnanoktar.wordpress.com have been blocked by Turkish judicial courts in Turkey before(by Gaziosmanpasa Civil Court of First Instance, dated 06.04.2007 and decision number 2007/130 D. Is) . We have also sent you the official documents on this judicial decision in one of our applications to you.
Since Edip Yuksel and his crime organization could easily start new blogs in your site, they had even launched a campaign in opening defamation blogs regarding my client and had explicitly expressed this organized endeavor in his defamation blogs:
“In order to make people hear our voice, let everyone start new blogs from websites such as
http://blogcu.comorhttps://wordpress.comand let them copy the posts on those blogs and paste them to their own. You can start several at once, if possible. Please remember that the name you will give to the blogs, should be related to Adnan Oktar or Harun Yahya in order to find them quickly through Google search. If the names are already taken, you can solve this problem by using characters such as “_” (Adnan_Oktar) or numbers such as AdnanOktar100, Adnan_Oktar_50.”The aim of all of these blogs that he and his organization starts, was to insult my client. All of them were completely full of slanderous statements. There are still some sites left open -not accessible from Turkey, but still accessible abroad – :
http://adnanoktar.wordpress.com
http://adnanoktarveislam.wordpress.com/
http://fitikado.wordpress.comhttp://oktarbabuna.wordpress.com
http://adnancilar.wordpress.com/
http://adnanoktarveislam.wordpress.com/
http://whoisharunyahya.wordpress.com/
http://adnanoktargercekleri.wordpress.com/
http://quiestharunyahya.wordpress.com/
http://harunyahyaarabic.wordpress.com/
http://safsataciharunyahya.wordpress.com/
http://savsatalaracevap.wordpress.com/The below are taken but still empty:
http://adnanzedeler.wordpress.com/
http://kodadiabi.wordpress.com/As we have requested before:
WE DEMAND YOU TO REMOVE AND PROHIBIT ANY BLOGS IN YOUR SITE THAT CONTAIN MY CLIENT’S NAME ADNAN OKTAR OR HIS PEN NAME HARUN YAHYA OR VARIOUS COMBINATION OF THESE 4 NAMES.
Yours sincerely,
Attorneys of Mr. Adnan Oktar (Harun Yahya)
Atty. Kerim Kalkan / Atty. Ceyhun Gökdoğan (Istanbul Barr register number:
27405)Address: Darulaceze caddesi, Bilal Is Merkezi, A Blok, D:5. Okmeydani Sisli
Istanbul
Telephone: 90 212 220 31 20
Fax: 90 212 220 74 21
E-mail: rotahukuk@rotahukuk.com
ceyhungokdogan@istanbulbarosu.org.tr
So there you have it.
I’m curious, particularly amoung our Turkish community, what do you think we should do about this? How should we respond?
Update: I have some new info from the offending lawyers on my blog.
WordPress.com News 
Mr. Harun Yahya / Adnan Oktar is close to the american ICR (Institute for Creation Research) and has organized some congresses with them in Istanbul, in the past years. Think about the power creationists have in USA and political support they have from right wing and it will not be so difficult to imagine how he’s got the power to induce turkiesh courts to do what he wants.
For the wordpress staff: of course you *don’t* have to submit you to such shameful attempt to deny the rights of free speech.
You simply can’t give in – our freedoms are under attack from the forces of unreason particularly fundamentalists of the “religions of the book”
you will just have to tough it out
please leave the posts where they are
This is really pathetic on their part.
Unless you (Automattic, WordPress.com, etc) are willing to duke it out in a Turkish court, there probably isn’t anything you can do about it.
On the other hand, look at the bright side.
When someone asks you what you’ve done today, you can reply, “Oh, nothing much really. Just ticked off the entire Turkish Government, resulting in a complete denial of access to any of my websites. How was your day?”
WordPress’s affordability to engage certified translators and legal consultants of pertinent countries for every languages used in all posts through her name is to be explored.
Do nothing is the best.Wikipedia, Wikimapia etc -alive and kicking.
Who cares what Turkey does? They obviously are not for free speech. That is the very essence of blogging. I wonder if you can do a google search for Mr. Adnan Oktar and find derogatory things about him in Turkey. So why not block Google, YouTube, and any other web content delivery entity that can be an open forum for free speech? But the truth is the Turkish people need to stand up for their own rights to publish blogs.
Sad that they can’t enjoy WordPress as many of us do, but it is not our business what Turkey does. WHO CARES?
In support of bloggers in Turkey I have changed my avatar. Please feel free to copy and use it yourselves. If everybody did it, it could become a very effective silent protest.
And on a point of law: the delivering up of interim and mandatory injunctions at ex parte interlocutory hearings in defamation cases is plainly contrary to the Vienna Convention to which Turkey are already signatories. Substantial legal remedies are available at the ECtHR.
A cheap publicity stunt at best by a Turkish whacko. Rather silly that the Turkish court fell for it that easily. They sure aren’t doing themselves, Turkey and Turkish folks around the globe any favors.
I think it’s important NOT to delete the blogs. My suggestion is that if this has come up Blogger (as another commenter mentioned) it would be worth a shot to contact Blogger to see how they handled it.
I remember blocking Turkey on my website 2 years ago – there’s a lot of hackers and spammers
In the spirit of blogging: The only way to settle this: challenge them to an online debate. Video and/or blogging so it’s open and there are no excuses.
There will be cultural differences but all-in-all, I think it would be a good idea. And I am positive Harun Yahya will agree.
This letter is from Adnan Oktar’s lawer
http://blog.wolkanca.com/wordpresscomu-adnan-oktar-kapattirdi/#comments
i wish someone can translate it in english so everybody will no whats going on.
if such blogs are violative against any sections in wp.com terms and conditions, remove those blogs.
if not, then try to review “each” blogs to see if it’s just mere an opinion or a defamatory campaign against that person.
we might as well block turkey users to access wp.com in return, but this, is not a really good idea, i think.
I agree with those who say deleting blogs is a bad precedent. And the joy of the net is that people can usually get around firewalls. I’m sure I’ve written stuff condemning Turkey for other reasons of Human Rights abuses; would they want my blog deleted? If you look around WP there must be posts slandering every country on Earth.
There is absolutely no rationality on the part of WordPress.com to go on and take any steps regarding this, unless and until these blogs disobey your own terms of service.
The very word blog is synonymous today with freedom of speech and expression, and doing anything against that would inflame the entire blogging community: of which wordpress.com is an integral part, and on which wordpress.com depends. No freedom of speech, No bloggers. No Bloggers, Automattic unhappy. Eh?
Matt, there’s a lot going on in the blogosphere on this as I’m sure you are aware. For one, the MidEast Youth petition to unblock WP in Turkey:
http://www.mideastyouth.com/petitions/view_petition/PET13433106/Petition_to_Unblock_WordPress_in_Turkey.htm
They successfully turned around the youTube ban in Morrocco with the same tactic.
And I, for one, am posting left, right & centre on this — being a Brit (with curiously quaint Western notions of freedom of speech!) AND based in Turkey.
There’s a whole bunch of issues here, but most of us WP bloggers inside Turkey are with you in what appears to be WP remaining “defiant” — i.e., not removing ANYTHING no matter what it says. However, there’s plenty of food for thought in your Terms of Service (link at bottom of page): WP is not responsible for Content = WP not guilty party. Content providers (read: bloggers) are responsible for Content, incuding “defamatory” statements. Then there’s a link to the Electronic Frontier Foundation’s site giving more info on what constitutes slander/defamation: http://www.eff.org/bloggers/lg/faq-defamation.php
It says that in cases involving a “public person” the onus is very much on the “public person” to prove that the defamation is, indeed, a lie:
“A public figure must show ‘actual malice’ — that you [the blogger] published with either knowledge of falsity or in reckless disregard for the truth. This is a difficult standard for a plaintiff [the public figure] to meet.”
Adnan Oktar is very much a public figure in Turkey. But this block is also obviously a result of Turkish law, not US, as the US Constitution 1st Amendment-inspired EFF criteria for freedom of speech on the Internet are.
It’s very complex. Edip Yuksel, the orginator of the “defamatory” blogs (and there’s many of them, but many of them blocked OUTSIDE of Turkey too) is no “white hat” good guy either.
What is the OFFICIAL WORDPRESS STANCE on all this? What is your plan of action? The apparent silence — it’s been one week since this all began — from WP HQ doesn’t help matters. It’s time to speak.
Why is anyone surprised by this? Hasn’t Turkey elected an Islamic government?
This is one of the perils of increasing Globalization, along with libel tourism.
Haha.. that’s funny. Even Egypt does not censor any blogs… thought turkey was more democratic than this. No wonder they don’t want it in the EU.
Clearly, Turkey’s judicial system has different ideas about rights and freedoms. I’d say do nothing. Let WordPress.com be banned. If people living in Turkey want to read a WordPress.com site, I’m sure they can find a way to do it. There are probably plenty of people out there that can set up some sort of site that will read and redirect the content to them without them having to actually come to WordPress.com. I suppose that would make it harder for them to discover new WordPress.com blogs, but I’m sure there’s a way to do that too. There’s always a way. It might take people in Turkey a bit more work and/or time, but too bad… if it annoys them that they have to take extra steps to read or write on their favorite WordPress.com blogs, then maybe they should speak up to their government.
To impersonate someone is crime, as far as I know.
Silly me! Scrub the very last question. I missed the link at the top of the page giving the latest on Photo Matt: http://photomatt.net/2007/08/25/turkey-update/
I’ve already covered it on my own WP blog, jimcolella.wordpress.com, along with every other development since Adnan Oktar raised his ugly schizophrenic head — not slander, by the way (Ok. Maybe the “ugly” bit, but only under Turkish law — back in reality, however, he is!).
By the way, he has 7 doctors’ reports to attest to his schizophrenia. It kept him out of compulsory military service. Libel again? Hmmm, that I got from the archives of Turkish daily newpaper Sabah, helpfully translated by my Turkish wife. What else is there? Oh yes: kidnap, gang rape (at least by his followers under his watchful eye and camera), blackmail (using the highly explicit photos) and SLANDER of the woman in question who was only 16 at the time:
http://arsiv.sabah.com.tr/1999/11/20/g06.html
…but of course, it’s in Turkish.
What? Adnan Hoca — as the press here call him, somewhat derogatively (“Hoca” means teacher) — sue a national newspaper for libel? Now that would take actual proof. It’s far easier to exploit existing slander laws in the much more untested territory of the Internet.
The 7 schizo reports article, by the way, is here. But again, Turkish only:
http://arsiv.sabah.com.tr/1999/11/20/g07.html
And for laughs, here’s his personal Web site (in English):
http://www.harunyahya.com/theauthor.php
Check the pics.
wow…is this random guy that big of a deal?
This is serious.
Interesting that Adnan Okhtar himself has been sued of defamation and lost.
Do nothing, Matt. Freedom has to be fought for and earned by the people who want it. I live in India where many such bans flare up, but are finally defeated by popular voice. Follow your rules, do the right thing and let the Turkish courts sort out their own bans and effects.
it is not a real problem for Turkish blogger and visitors
most of them are using those DNS servers
* 208.67.222.222
* 208.67.220.220
to access wordpress.com and so on…