
Turkish government takes down YouTube too - boolean
http://en.webrazzi.com/2014/03/27/defiant-turkish-goverment-takes-down-youtube-too-breaking-news/
======
hocaoglv
After Twitter, this was expected. Just couple of hours ago, leaked audio
recordings were uploaded to Youtube which show "Foreign Minister Ahmet
Davutoğlu, National Intelligence Organization (MİT) Undersecretary Hakan
Fidan, Foreign Ministry Undersecretary Feridun Sinirlioğlu and Deputy Chief of
General Staff Gen. Yaşar Güler are heard discussing possible intervention into
Syria and possible reactions from the world"

They were planning to organize artificial attacks from Syrian border and put
the blame on Syria and strength Erdogan's position before local elections.

~~~
cryoshon
It's pretty ghastly that people are willing to fabricate rationale for getting
into war. I really hope that the Turks dispose of their leaders expediently
and forcefully.

~~~
toyg
Yeah, like US and UK populations voted out their chief warmongers pronto, once
it came out that the rationale for getting into the Iraq war was fabricated...
oh wait

~~~
jann
I'm very sorry but I really don't like that argument. That doesn't make it any
less ghastly for others to be like that as well.

The argument you bring seems similar to what people say about the Crimea-
Crisis (that 'the west' isn't allowed to complain because of Bosnia). Just
because 'the west' interfered illegally in Bosnia, doesn't give Russia a free
pass to do so as well.

~~~
digitalengineer
Doesn't the us have the Monroe doctrine? It allows for the invasion of foreign
country's when the us feels threatened right?

~~~
dragonwriter
> Doesn't the us have the Monroe doctrine?

Not really. The particular concern about limiting future expansion of European
colonialism at its center (inasfar as the part of it that might justify US
action is concerned) hasn't really been a concern really since the early 20th
Century, though the name was dusted off by some (misleadingly) in the Cold War
for applications of the Kennedy Doctrine within the Western Hemisphere, and
the doctrine was explicitly described as being dead by Secretary of State John
Kerry last year.

> It allows for the invasion of foreign country's when the us feels threatened
> right?

Not as actually articulated by Monroe (in fact, if the country was in Europe,
its specifically _negated_ some justifications for involvement).

------
ljd
It's interesting to see a country dismantle internet access site by site. It
challenges our notions of what we think will always be there.

If your site has a dependency on YouTube, your site isn't going to be
functioning in Turkey.

It's like Netflix's Chaos Monkey [0], but in real life.

[0][http://techblog.netflix.com/2012/07/chaos-monkey-released-
in...](http://techblog.netflix.com/2012/07/chaos-monkey-released-into-
wild.html)

~~~
arbitrage
It was interesting when we saw governments attempt it last time, too. And then
they stopped, because they were overthrown.

I wonder if this is going to be a law, now ... a government that attempts to
dismantle the internet a piece at a time in their country is going to fail.

~~~
Joeboy
This reminds me of the "information wants to be free" and "the internet
interprets censorship as damage and routes around it" slogans of yesteryear.
The internet isn't magic. There is no natural law that means it will always
emerge victorious.

~~~
evv
You're right- the internet isn't magic. There is a natural law at play here,
and you just mentioned it!

Information does want to be free- its not just a slogan, its a universal law.

There is no practical way for a corrupt government to constrain the flow of
information in this day and age.

~~~
owenjones
What about North Korea?

I think that's still just a slogan.

~~~
stelonix
North Korea never had Internet (as we know it) in the first place, so it does
not apply.

~~~
delinka
"Information wants to be free" doesn't apply to North Korea because they never
had access to the Internet as we know it? Information is only dependent on the
Internet insofar as the Internet is a transmission medium. Other media exist
even in NK- print, broadcast, word-of-mouth.

Information can be exchanged freely by whispering voices.

~~~
EGreg
That information has a much higher chance of corruption while in transit, and
the bandwidth is low. People can't broadcast photos and videos through
whispers for instance.

~~~
delinka
Whether the information is corruptible isn't the issue. Freedom to share it
is. Before the Internet, we had entire civilizations (even free ones) built on
communication that was less than perfect. I'm sure that in the early years of
the USA broadcasting photos and videos wasn't a high priority, yet, somehow,
freedom to share information was acknowledged as a basic human right that must
not be removed.

------
DickingAround
Blocking social media sites and expecting it to reduce tension is like turning
off TV & radio broadcasting and expecting people to remain in their homes;
it's a failure to understand modern systems of control. Orwell doesn't work at
all. Huxley is your only hope Turkey :P

~~~
InclinedPlane
Orwell does work, North Korea and Cuba are examples of that. But you can't
create an Orwellian police state over night, and those sorts of oppressive
regimes tend to be unstable (Libya, East Germany, Romania, etc. all gone now).

~~~
DickingAround
Fair point, good examples. Agree with stability issues.

------
zmanian
It is amazing the DNS system lasted this long. Turkey seems ready to push over
this house of cards. Hopefully a namecoin type system will rise from the
ashes. Trust without cryptography is dead.

~~~
icebraining
For this kind of censorship, namecoin wouldn't have helped. Turkey could've
just watched the namecoin blockchain and update their IP blacklist directly
from it.

~~~
zmanian
IP blacklisting is not as appealing to governments as DNS blocking because of
virtual hosts. The collateral damage from breaking DNS is bad enough. IP
blocking runs the risk of breaking essential economic services.

It is possible for governments to invest in session interruption like what
China does is possible.

Layering trustworthy DNS, ubiquitous SSL and Tor

------
nine_k
The Internet was designed to withstand damage due to nuclear warfare and other
external disruptions. It apparently was not designed to reliably withstand
serious attacks of malicious third parties controlling some segments of it.

Time to adapt.

~~~
toyg
The Internet certainly was; HTTP and DNS, not so much.

Note how it's not TCP/IP failing here.

~~~
epimenov
You can make tcp/ip fail as well, just like Pakistan did back in 2008:
[http://www.renesys.com/2008/02/pakistan-hijacks-
youtube-1/](http://www.renesys.com/2008/02/pakistan-hijacks-youtube-1/)

------
frade33
Question of the day!

I am not supporting Turkish Govt here, nor I have any concern with this
country.

If a classified video is made live on a Turkish Video website, would US Govt
block it or not?

or Do you approve of releasing classified videos or calls?., because according
to my understanding regardless of the content of those videos or calls, they
are in violation of 'privacy' and perhaps are classified too.?

I am just making sure, that I do not become a victim of double-standards
here... :/

~~~
orik
I don't believe the US Gov would do more than a DCMA takedown request.

Wikileaks hasn't been taken down.

If someone did have a recording of a Classified Video/Call I guess it would be
up to their discretion to leak or not to leak.

~~~
frade33
That's a fair answer.

------
corkill
This will just push everyone sharing info to Facebook.

Next move bye bye Facebook...or internet.

Any way to build a mobile app that rotates servers enough to circumvent this
kind of blocking?

~~~
arasatasaygin
I don't think that will happen. Though I didn't think that they would block
twitter too :)

~~~
corkill
Would this picture change your mind?

[http://t.co/lCaMDBxZER](http://t.co/lCaMDBxZER)

Seems they are working their way up the chain of services.

------
shna
I am a native Turkish speaker and I listened the recording. For one thing I
did not hear anything you would not expect to hear from most of the statesman
in the west in a similar situation.

Conversation is about the future stance of Turkey for the civil war in Syria
and lack of enough resolve for the last 3 years to intervene properly, and
that does not mean directly involving but not supplying ammo to rebel groups
against Assad regime. They are complaining that the civil war took a turn
toward total destabilization of the region, especially after Al-Qaeda linked
group called ISIL[1] started taking over anti-Assad rebel groups. They fear
that if ISIL becomes an armed power next to Turkey's border it will be a huge
security concern. The head of intelligence agency says that if Turkey going to
engage against them in the future it should be done so on their terms but not
the other side's choosing. The mention of alleged provocation of the head of
intelligence by his minions firing rockets from the Syrian side into Turkish
side is correct. He says his men can do that. However he says that in the
context they want to be the one starting the assault on ISIL, not the other
way around. They argue that if they should wait for the ISIL to attack first.
So again it is about engaging al-Qaeda linked group but not starting war with
Syria. In this recording foreign minister mention that they want to avoid any
conflict with Syria due to their capabilities. I do believe that any war with
Syria destabilizes Turkey grossly and it is definitely something they would
want to avoid and they did.

The al-Qaeda linked group (ISIL) invaded one the Syrian village about [4]
30-40km away from the Turkish border about a week ago. And like many Turkish I
learned something new last week. In that village there's the tomb[2] of the
grandfather of the founder of Ottoman Empire. Surrounding of that tomb which
is a tiny tiny land in that village belongs to Turkish Republic. The monument
is protected by Turkish soldiers who reside there permanently. After ISIL
invaded the surrounding village they demanded [5] that Turkish soldiers leave
the monument. However that land is part of Turkish sovereign land and Turkey
reacted that she would intervene forcefully. Even we have been reading that
couple of F-16 fighters are kept ready to take off on the tarmac and special
ops can intervene in 90 seconds.

In the recording, foreign minister mentions the option of intervention to ISIL
using the Tomb as an excuse, even if they do not attack monument and the
soldiers. They mention that world would support such intervention since this
is a al-Qaeda linked group. So they would like to attack ISIL fully in the
whole region.

They are not warmongering against Syria, and they fear that ISIL's presence
could become permanent and can become something of huge security concern for
years to come.. In the recording, head of Turkish intelligence mention about
lack of resolve of the government. He says if they did not intervene while
thousands of people died, still attack on the Tomb of Suleyman Shah is a
weaker argument to start an attack.

Probably we need to consider how US would react if an Al-Qaeda linked group
starts taking over northern villages of Mexico while a civil war is going on
in there.

However the main post is about YouTube ban due to this recording. I just
wanted to give another perspective.

[1]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islamic_State_of_Iraq_and_the_L...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islamic_State_of_Iraq_and_the_Levant)
[2]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tomb_of_Suleyman_Shah](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tomb_of_Suleyman_Shah)
[3]
[https://plus.google.com/109044970213631232914/about?gl=us&hl...](https://plus.google.com/109044970213631232914/about?gl=us&hl=en)
[4]
[https://www.google.com/maps/place/Tomb+of+Suleyman+Shah/@36....](https://www.google.com/maps/place/Tomb+of+Suleyman+Shah/@36.638775,38.207574,9z/data=!4m2!3m1!1s0x0:0x5adb35d180fca6a2)
[5] [http://www.worldbulletin.net/turkey/132062/isil-deadline-
for...](http://www.worldbulletin.net/turkey/132062/isil-deadline-for-turkish-
pull-out-from-suleiman-shah-tomb-expires)

~~~
pessimizer
>Probably we need to consider how US would react if an Al-Qaeda linked group
starts taking over northern villages of Mexico while a civil war is going on
in there.

Why would "al-Qaeda linked" groups be considered more dangerous than the mass-
murdering cartels? Mexico is almost a failed state and we haven't invaded.

~~~
shna
There is not a civil war in Mexico, is it? Mexican government is not bombing
Mexican cities with fighter jets either. 120,000 (actually 658,000 if
proportioned it to Mexican population) people have not died in Mexico in the
last 3 years, and 3 million (12 million) people have not displaced as refugee
in bordering countries either. Would you like me to go on?

Mexican government is fully cooperating with US and not acting like an enemy
towards US, eh?

~~~
pessimizer
>There is not a civil war in Mexico, is it?

Depends on who you ask.

>120,000 (actually 658,000 if proportioned it to Mexican population) people
have not died in Mexico in the last 3 years

No, more like 100,000 in eight. What's your threshold?

>3 million (12 million) people have not displaced as refugee in bordering
countries either.

[http://usopenborders.com/2012/04/160000-mexicans-
displaced-i...](http://usopenborders.com/2012/04/160000-mexicans-displaced-
in-2011-most-by-drug-violence-un-3/)

edit: I'm not using Mexican figures to say that fabricating evidence in order
to invade is wrong - it just is. I'm saying that using the US as a
justification is illegitimate. The US has a record of invading countries in
order to enrich itself. To say that Turkey is invading for the same reasons
that the US invades is to say that Turkey is going to lie to its own people
and the world in order to make a resource grab. That's awful, and a lot of
people think that Blair and Bush should be in prison for it.

~~~
shna
Nowhere I said Turkey should invade or anything. This is a bit getting out of
hand. I just wanted to draw attention giving an example. However creating a
temporary buffer zone where a terrorist group already taken control of is not
unthinkable either.

------
MimiZ
They can't cover up their corruption.

It's like the whole world is watching...how could they be so stupid.

What are they going to do next? Block Google? Apparently they top the list of
"government requests that request content removal":
[http://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/turkey-tops-google-
content-...](http://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/turkey-tops-google-content-
removal-request-list-.aspx?pageID=238&nID=59887&NewsCatID=374)

~~~
darkhorn
Check your emails quickly, I'm going to shut down the electricity
[http://i.imgur.com/Dkf3QKR.jpg](http://i.imgur.com/Dkf3QKR.jpg)

------
erichurkman
I hope enough copies of whatever damning evidence the Turkish government wants
to suppress are being disseminated outside of Turkey as well as inside the
country.

Long live Sneaker Net.

~~~
josephschmoe
People really underestimate the power of the sneaker net. The fastest way to
transmit data is by carrier pigeon.

------
tzaman
It's sad that one corrupt politian has this much power

------
theverse
Google's live traffic stats for Youtube:
[http://www.google.com/transparencyreport/traffic/explorer/?r...](http://www.google.com/transparencyreport/traffic/explorer/?r=TR&l=YOUTUBE&csd=1394844554482&ced=1395412200000)

~~~
jann
Not very 'live' ... The latest data I can retrieve is from the 23rd of March

~~~
theverse
If you skip to the very end, you can see data from March 27. Not significantly
low volume though.
[http://www.google.com/transparencyreport/traffic/explorer/?r...](http://www.google.com/transparencyreport/traffic/explorer/?r=TR&l=YOUTUBE&csd=1393939800000&ced=1395932815862)

------
blendergasket
What's really interesting to me is that it seems like some very, very powerful
and well-connected player, who either has access to the communication networks
or people at the top of the Turkish totem pole is trying to use social media
to destabilize/overthrow a government.

I don't know much about what's going on in Turkey and the corruption that's
being exposed is definitely hugely damning, but I'm curious if there is any
credible idea as to who is behind all this leaking? It definitely isn't a
group of your average concerned citizens.

~~~
jballanc
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G%C3%BClen_movement](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G%C3%BClen_movement)

------
spoiler
Isn't this the wrong approach, though? I mean, sure you can _try_ to block
people form finding the truth, but at least be covert about it; this is plain
naïve.

Their methodology is just putting them (the government) into the spotlight.
Shouldn't they try and divert the attention?

This ensures people find the truth sooner rather than later. I feel like
they've been played by some high-up in the government techs person who just
got sick of the corruption and decided to add a catalyst.

------
MCarusi
Since the Twitter block was working just so well.

------
stephengillie
At least we have a Redundant Array of Independent Social Networks to help us
route around this intentional damage.

~~~
logfromblammo
All we need now is a Border Rules Agnostic Network, and the RAISN BRAN will be
part of this healthy information breakfast.

~~~
Terr_
Dynamically Routed Independent Network Kludge

Yields Oppression Unwinding Reaction

Opposition Values Actions Leading Towards Individual and Nation Emancipation

------
bayesianhorse
And in the following week some court will take down the takedown...

On some part, yes, the Turkish government tries to restrict free speech, on
the the other hand they seem to be abysmally bad at it!

------
higherpurpose
Decentralized (federated) video sharing alternative:

[http://mediagoblin.org/](http://mediagoblin.org/)

------
cturhan
This was expected and it was late than I expect. Now, they will block facebook
and this will be their ending.

------
_nato_
Q: do embedded videos on other domains (such as fixyt.com) get blocked, too?
How does that work?

~~~
icebraining
The embedded videos are still fetched by the browser from YouTube domains, so
a DNS block should affect them as well.

~~~
_nato_
Thanks. `Makes sense.

------
witty_username
Technically videos could be accessed as they are served from googlevideo.com

------
jotm
How can they do this knowing what's going on in Ukraine and Egypt?

------
mrkickling
This is how you start a revolution.

~~~
vacri
Usually the Turkish army would have stepped in and restored some sanity by
now. Turkey is in the odd position that it's military coups tend to increase
democracy. However, as I understand it, as Turkey wants (wanted?) to be an EU
member, the army has been hesitant this time around, and the politicians have
used this moment of political weakness to defang any unfriendly military
chiefs.

------
PetoU
and the next revolution comes to...

~~~
gkya
We've had that 3 times a century, so I guess most would rather like this govt
to get outvoted than overthrown.

------
twobits
It's because of this leak: Turkish top political and military leaders,
organizing a false flag attack, to have an excuse to attack Syria:

[http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-03-27/here-youtube-
false-...](http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-03-27/here-youtube-false-flag-
attack-syria-clip-erdogan-wanted-banned)

~~~
yawz
Just to add to this point: There are regional elections in Turkey on Sunday
and the ruling party is expected to receive a serious blow. One of the rumours
has always been that this government could even risk going to war rather than
losing power. Well... now we have proof that it is the case.

------
pearjuice
All my support goes to the Turkish government for trying to abrupt the Western
propaganda and disrupting the influences of American secret national agencies.
It is no secret that the protests and revolutions in Syria, Egypt, Tunis and
the like were caused by internal fabrications from American soil so they could
use the uproar for settling marionettes and proper satellite states instead of
having to deal with nations which are against America and Israel.

Hopefully the Turkish government is successful in its endeavors to protect its
citizens from a faux-revolution fed by propaganda easily spread in this
digital age (i.e. Youtube and Twitter, Facebook is of high concern too).

The only counter-measure is to shut. it. down.

~~~
yulaow
Personally I think this reasoning is totally bullshit.

People have a brain and can easily discern and analyze the information they
get from different sources. Internet, in this sense, is the main "method" to
get information for gazzillion different sources, compare them, discuss with
other people with other ideas and, in the end, come to a objective conclusion.

Shut it down is not at all a counter-measure... rather I suspect that only
will push the people to rage against the oppressors of freedom to get
information. That's a suicide measure and also the worst one because people
will instantly think "woah, so this guy must have something really bad to hide
if he is literally trying to shut down the internet".

~~~
digitalengineer
Isn't the saying something along the lines of "a person is smart but people
are dumb"? It was proven there were NGO's stirring up things in Kiev. It was
also proven they totally lost control and now we have armed militants
(neonazi's?) even demonstrating their 'power' by showing up in parliament.
(This made Putins say, now he can claim to protect the Russian minority).

