Court restores Turks' Wikipedia rights in censorship case
The top Turkish court's decision that the three-year ban on Wikipedia violated freedom of expression should have gone into effect after its official publication made it binding on Wednesday, but the website is still inaccessible in Turkey.
ISTANBUL — Turkey appeared ready to lift a nearly three-year ban on Wikipedia on Wednesday after its top court ruled the embargo violated freedom of expression, but internet freedom activists warned it was too soon to celebrate as scores of critical websites remain offline.
The government’s Official Gazette published the details of a Dec. 26 ruling by the Constitutional Court on Wednesday, making the judgment binding. Hours after publication, however, the online encyclopedia remained inaccessible.
The sweeping ban on one of the world’s most visited websites had come to embody President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s heavy-handed approach to dissent, with opposition parties making access a campaign pledge and social media users pining for its unrivaled reams of free information.
The Wikipedia block is part of a broader pattern of online censorship in Turkey. The Freedom of Expression Association says the government obstructs nearly a quarter of a million sites. Turkey leads the world in requests to Twitter to remove content, submitting more than 6,000 in the first half of last year. Facebook acquiesced to demands by authorities and restricted 2,300 items in 2018.
