Don’t Block the Blog would like to express its dissatisfaction at the recent development in Turkey where the Turkish Government has been served with a court order to enforce a blanket censorship on the entire WordPress.com blog hosting website, forcing all WordPress blogs to become inaccessible to the people of Turkey. This development occurred because one specific blog, AdnanOktar.wordpress.com, criticised Adnan Oktar (Haryun Yahya) a Turkish proponent of creationism in the debates of evolution vs. creationism. Oktar has put forth numerous books under the name Harun Yahya arguing against evolution, and has been widely criticized for his methods in promoting his religious viewpoints.

The lawyers of Adnan Oktar have accused a Turkish blogger, Edip Yuksel, of running a slander campaign against their client, Adnan Oktar. In this regard upholding their petition in court the Fatih 2nd Civil Court of First Instance, number 2007/195, has ordered the Turkish authorities to block all access to the entire WordPress.com domain in Turkey. Oktar’s lawyers go on to argue with the administrators of the WordPress organization to remove and prohibit any blogs on the site that may contain any reference to Adnan Oktar or his pen name Harun Yahya, or any combination of the four names.

This is an attack on the freedom of expression for the people of Turkey, and in this regard the Don’t Block the Blog organization strongly opposes this and all forms of censorships being enforced by the Turkish government, be it one site or a blanket ban on over 12 millions blogs on the free hosting servers.

The Don’t Block the Blog organization joins hands with millions of Turkish bloggers and blog readers to protest against this blatant suppression of free speech. Don’t Block the blog is now positioned as an international organization to protest against censorship of blogs worldwide We urge the Turkish authorities to undo this measure as it hinders free flow on information and also definitely casts a very negative image of Turkey to the world.

DON’T BLOCK THE BLOG strongly opposes any form of internet censorship, and requests the support of national and international bloggers, media, and free speech organizations to help our cause by continuing to highlight the issue of the unfair blanket ban of blogs

Background:

The DON’T BLOCK THE BLOG (DBTB) campaign (Help-Pakistan.com/main/) was launched by Dr. Awab Alvi and Omer Alvie on 3rd March, 2006 in order to highlight the unfair blanket ban of the blogspot domain and additionally to show support for free internet speech in general. It has slowly progressed to an more widespread international organization protesting against all forms of censorship of blogs the world over and in this effort has established itself on a new domain DBTB.org for this purpose