The Anatomy of Vagina Censorship in Turkey

Wikipedia’s entries in Turkish for “vagina” and “human penis” have been censored in the service provider TTNET. However, both TTNET, Telecommunication Authorities (TIB) and Service Providers Union (ESB) deny the situation, leaving the actor and reason of the censorship as mystery. 

If we simply track down the incident like an ordinary user; 

* When we search the word “vagina” on tr.wikipedia.org, we come up with a black screen saying “This web page is not active”. However, if use 3G or another service provider, we can view the entry. 

Censorship through filing technology 

* Pirate Party’s internet activist Yasin Özel told bianet that the restriction was made through URL as it was aimed to restrict wikipedia’s mobile application as well. He also added that this allowed its doer to file user’s activities which required a technology called Deep Package Inspection (DPI).

ESB: No restriction 

* In order to find out whether the restriction was imposed due to a court order, we contacted ESB as a regular customer, asking whether there is any restriction. We found out that there was no such restriction for the URL “http://tr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vajina”. 

TTNET: We didn’t do it, TIB did

* TTNET, on the other hand, denied the censorship claims, saying that the restriction was based on court rulings or Law 5651. They claimed that the restriction was made by TIB. 

TIB: No such ruling 

* When we searched the ruling on TIB’s website, we found that “Telecommunication Authorities did not execute any order regarding this website”. 

* Telecommunications lawyer Serhat Koç told bianet that TIB had the power to restrict content without a court order even though the European Court of Human Rights convicted Turkey regarding Law 5651 Article 8. 

Questions

All those bring to mind the following questions:

* If the ban order, according to TTNET’s claims, belongs to TIB, why doesn’t the ruling appear on TIB website? 

* If the ban order, according to TTNET’s claims, belongs to TIB, why is it only valid for TTNET?

* If there is no such court order but an administration ruling, why doesn’t it still appear on TIB’s website and why is it only valid for TTNET? 

* If there is no ban, why can’t TTNET users reach out that content? (EA/BM)

** Click here to read the article in Turkish.