YouTube Remains Blocked in Turkey, Despite Court Order

Image: Associated Press/Associated Press

YouTube remains and will remain blocked in Turkey for the time being, even though a court ordered the government to unblock the video-sharing website on Wednesday.

The Turkish telecom regulator, the Information and Communications Technologies Authority (BTK), announced on Thursday that it will not lift the ban until 'criminal content' is removed from YouTube, according to various news reports. The BTK is ignoring the court order, so the timeline for lifting the ban remains unclear.

'The measure blocking access to the youtube.com Internet site remains in place,' BTK said in a statement on its website, according to Hurriyet Daily News. 'Some content in 15 links was removed, but YouTube blocked some other content only for Turkish users while leaving it open to other countries. Since March 27, a total of 151 links have been located on the website broadcasting the same criminal content.'

The criminal content is likely referring to videos deemed insulting to Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, the founder of the Turkish Republic. The YouTube ban, ordered by the government on March 27, was later confirmed by the Ankara's Gölbaşı district court, citing a law that makes it illegal to insult Atatürk.

This is the latest in a seemingly endless back-and-forth on the YouTube ban.

Last week, a court issued the first ruling ordering the ban to be lifted, but later on the same day a higher court reversed the order after an appeal by the Turkish prosecutor.

Turkey blocked YouTube after an anonymous user posted leaked recordings of an alleged high-security meeting among Turkey's intelligence chief, the foreign minister and the deputy head of the armed forces, during which they discussed potential military operations against Syria. The leak was the latest in a long string of leaked wiretaps posted on the site, which allegedly uncovered corruption within the government of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.

The YouTube ban came just a week after the Turkish government banned Twitter, as Erdoğan announced his intention to 'eradicate' the social network completely.

Turks found several ways to circumvent the Twitter ban, though, sending a record number of tweets just a few hours following the block.

A lower court ordered the government to lift the Twitter block on March 26. But the social network remained blocked until April 3, when the country's Constitutional Court ruled that the Twitter block violated Turks' free speech rights and ordered the government to unblock it immediately.

The YouTube ban is likely to go all the way to the Constitutional Court, too. Mashable reached out to YouTube for comment on this latest development, and will update this post as we learn more.

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