Turkish authorities want Facebook to block pages that insult Mohammed. If it doesn’t, Turkey will take its toys and go home.
A court has threatened to cut off Facebook across Turkey if the US tech giant does not block a number of pages which it believes insult the Prophet Mohamed.
The ruling passed on Sunday was followed by a request by a prosecutor, state broadcaster TRT reported.
By Monday, Facebook had blocked one offending page in response to a valid legal request from Turkish authorities, a source told Reuters.
The court order is the latest move to crack down on material seen as offending religious sensibilities in the secular but majority Muslim nation.
Religious sensibilities could always consider growing up, you know. That would be one way to deal with the “problem.”
Earlier this month, prosecutors launched an inquiry after a newspaper reprinted parts of the French satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo, in the wake of an attack by extremist Islamic militants on its offices in Paris.
How dare a newspaper cover an event like that? What an outrage to religious sensibilities.
attempts to curb social media use are not new in Turkey. Last year, the government blocked access to Twitter after users tweeted the Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu with links to a corruption scandal, and implemented a two-month ban against YouTube on similar grounds, The Verge reported.
And in December, police arrested more than two dozen journalists and media executives in a move that the European Union condemned as an attack on the free press.
Mohammed is a poopy head. There.
About 25 years ago, I visited Argentina, a country which, at the time, struck me as a first-world country rapidly sliding back into the third world. Turkey today seems to be a country sliding back into the 6th century.
Here we see revealed religion’s relationship as helpmeet for monarchial authority: power uses religion to put in place the mechanisms to suppress criticism of power. Religion has always been the preferred technique of social control (until the invention of public relations and managed democracy)
Bingo, Marcus! Ergodan is a petty satrap who sees Islam in the same light Mike Huckabee or Rick Perry sees Dominonist Christianity. He’ trying to stop the democratization of information flow on behalf of a Prophet and Allah too damn weak and feckless to defend themselves? Well, sure, if he can stop secular criticism of his administration in the process. Then it’s clearly all about piety, voila!
Isn’t Turkey supposedly a secular democracy? Then again, USA is supposed to be one, too, so…
Makes me want to make a Facebook page insulting Mohammed. I will suppress that impulse. It’s probably better to make a Facebook page supporting the secular, moderate voices within Turkey and elsewhere.
I did make a point of insulting Mo on my Facebook wall yesterday.
Turkey’s ‘secular state’ is, with the benefit of hindsight, nothing more than an illusion, it’s a Muslim majority society, let’s not be naive. Sooner or later, Indonesia, that other hope for ‘moderation’ will go down the Islamic gurgler as well.
@1 Trebuchet,
Agreed, I was there about 30 years ago, there was evidence of vanished prosperity everywhere, although I don’t think that Argentina ever quite made it into the First World.
Mohammed’s not a poopy head. He’s dead. And I’m sure he was at least smart enough to be a convincing liar.
How dare you compare a mere Prophet to the mighty Myers??!?