Several thousand opponents of the proposed Turkish internet censorship bid, set to take effect in Turkey in August, marched in protest in Istanbul on Sunday.

Demonstrators carried signs in Turkish and English reading “Don’t touch my Internet” and “We don’t need protection,” while they chanted slogans against website censorship.

Internet users must choose among four filtering options, including family, children, domestic or standard settings, as a part of Turkey’s “Safe Internet Service.”

The BTK was “not fooling anyone when it claims to be rendering a service to Internet users by giving them a choice between a lot of restrictions and fewer restrictions,” the report said.
Turkey already blocks more than 7,000 websites, “in most cases without reference to any court,” the report said.

The Turkish internet censorship bid is merely one step in a programme of stealthy (and not-so-stealthy) Islamisation that has been taking place in the country since the election of the governing AK Party in 2002.

This government has wrenched Turkey from the progressive reforms of the past 80 years – and Mustafa Kemal Atatürk’s goal of a secular, western-facing Muslim nation – taking it to the point where it increasingly resembles an Iran-esque Islamostate.

It certainly looks to be a very long way from a country which is supposed to be preparing itself for European Union accession. Read more

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