
Wikipedia blocked in Turkey - alansammarone
https://turkeyblocks.org/2017/04/29/wikipedia-blocked-turkey/
======
RcouF1uZ4gsC
I think 2016 will go down as the high water mark for a global Internet. I see
a lot of countries looking at the success of China in keeping political
control, and the failure of Egypt, Tunisia, etc where the open Internet was
used to overthrow the regime and deciding that allowing an open, free internet
is not in their best interests. If you think that Western, liberal democracies
are exempt from this, just look at the attention "fake news" and "no platform"
have been getting. We are going away from the free and open interchange and
discussion of ideas (even horrible ideas) to the coercive suppression of ideas
(at this point bad ideas, but may not be true in the future).

Add to this that a large portion of the web content is controlled by fewer
entities (if Facebook or Google bans your site, you are not going to get very
much exposure). Also, we are moving from user controlled general purpose
computers to secured, walked garden devices. The government by applying
pressure on maybe a dozen companies, can control what type of information the
average person is exposed to.

And the whole dodge that the first amendment only applies to the government is
dangerous. Freedom of speech is as much a principle as a law. If we get used
to large powerful non-government entities suppressing speech we do not like,
it will be a brief step to accepting government doing the same or at least
pressuring the non-government entities to so it.

~~~
sanderjd
> the whole dodge that the first amendment only applies to the government is
> dangerous

As a supporter of that "dodge", allow me to defend it (though I don't really
disagree with your comment in general).

Freedom of speech as a _principle_ has a fundamental tension. One person's
freedom to speak must be balanced with another person's freedom to exclude
that speech from their private life. Private folks having the ability to go
places where they can ignore the people they've chosen to ignore is an
important part of why free speech works at all. For instance, we don't need
laws against Holocaust deniers, we can simply choose to frequent places where
they are excluded.

Freedom of speech as a _law_ is the release valve for this tension. If every
private individual and organization in the country has chosen to ignore a
person's views, that person is still free to make themselves heard with the
government. They can write letters and go to meetings with no fear of
punishment for the unpopularity of their beliefs. They can't be legally kept
from starting their own private organization where they are not ignored and
advertising it to attract others.

Personally, I just find this all to be a very good solution to a difficult
problem, so I'm skeptical when I see suggestions that it should be done
differently. In this case, the suggestion is that the freedom to exclude (as a
principle - there is no law in this direction) should be more tightly
regulated. Maybe that's a good idea because of the unique circumstances of the
internet, but I'm not yet convinced that it's better than the current regime,
which has existed for a long time, and which I think works pretty well.

~~~
cookiecaper
>One person's freedom to speak must be balanced with another person's freedom
to exclude that speech from their private life. Private folks having the
ability to go places where they can ignore the people they've chosen to ignore
is an important part of why free speech works at all.

That's not how it works. The "public square" is supposed to be open to all
opinions. If you want protection, you have to retreat into the cloister of a
private establishment that disallows this. In the past, it was not possible to
bypass the public square, and thus to avoid exposure to the sentiment of
anyone who cared to stand there and hand out his papers or cry his opinion.
This was a necessary part of travel between private establishments that used
their limited property rights over a small piece of land to exclude such
stumping within that small parcel only.

The internet is blurring the lines of the public square. We no longer need to
traverse the public streets where all views are free to be expressed; via the
internet, people are instantly teleported from cloistered space A to
cloistered space B. People are starting to feel it is their right to go about
their businesses without being exposed to things they dislike, which, whether
they realize it or not, is a very worrisome disavowal of the principles
undergirding our freedoms. The effect of this on discourse, democracy, and all
of our freedoms should not be understated.

Ironically, rather than unifying mankind and increasing sympathy and
understanding, we are using network technology to maximize comfort by crafting
artificial "safe spaces" where patrons never even have to be _exposed_ to
thoughts they dislike. That's bad.

The divide has never been more palpable than during the last election cycle.
Nearly half the country was so misinformed that they didn't even believe the
outcome was possible, and hostility and misunderstanding are reaching
frightening heights, in some cases escalating into violence (post-election
rioting, Berkeley).

Whatever is creating those circumstances needs to be fixed, and my belief is
that a generation that is used to muting and blocking anything they dislike
and spending most of their time in hyper-sanitized environments safe for
corporate sponsorship and being coddled in public spaces to minimize corporate
liability is no small part in this.

~~~
Angostura
I'm interested in why you are commenting in here, rather than (say) Youtube or
4Chan. Might it be because the active moderation here allows for a certain
type of discourse?

~~~
cookiecaper
Yes. I don't intend to say that _no one_ should be able to organize their
forums or exclude some speech; doing so is a critical part of maintaining
something functional and workable.

We don't have to fling to one extreme or the other. There is a moderate
position here. And remember, this is about the importance of free speech as a
_social principle_. If we don't cherish our rights, they'll vanish. I'm not
necessarily advocating any specific legal changes.

HN is a boutique site that targets a specific niche. I would guess it has a
few thousand active users. It's developed and designed specifically to
facilitate discussion on issues that fit its niche and target audience.

Facebook, Twitter, et al, on the other hand, are platforms that function much
like public utilities. They are used by the masses to disseminate speech of
all kinds. They target a generic user base and suggest that they can all use
the site to follow their individual interests.

Beyond the mere target audience of "everyone", Facebook and Google have
_massive_ amounts of control. The penetration of Google and Facebook is
probably almost exactly equal with the penetration of internet service (and to
some extent, both have projects that take them beyond that sphere). If you use
the internet, the likelihood is that significant amounts of your usage are
under the direct control of these corporations.

Facebook boasts over 1 billion daily active users. That is 1/8 of the earth's
population. That is MASSIVE -- far further reaching than any monopoly in the
pre-internet age. Facebook is also the platform that people depend on most
heavily for self-expression. It's a central hub that many people visit
multiple times each day; some groups and businesses are now run _entirely_ out
of Facebook. Functionally, it is not unlike the pre-internet public square,
and it's a frequent crossroads for almost all internet users. As with past
public squares, it's _possible_ to avoid it if you're trying _really hard_ ,
but you essentially have to be a digital recluse.

This applies similarly to Google for search, email, and mobile.

As such, it's scary when such powerful platforms that present with such
generic mission statements and see such widespread adoption start erasing
political speech because they deem it "offensive" at the corporate level.

That is a ridiculous amount of control, and it's something we've never
experienced before. Even the broadcasters of the 20th century were limited by
the reach of radio waves to specific metros, and they usually had several
easily accessible competitors (that people would actually use, unlike FB's
direct competitors). We used to worry about the large influence of these
people so much that it was illegal to own more than a certain number of major
media outlets in the same market (that restriction was removed in 2003, IIRC).
[We also used to have the Fairness Doctrine to compel broadcasters to
accurately present both sides of the political issues.]

People recognized the damage to the public square posed by moving the
discussion off to corporate-controlled broadcast media and wanted a way to
check the power of the broadcasters. We seem to have forgotten about that
risk, just at the moment when the central control of a small handful of people
is most potent.

Imagine that printing press manufacturers had the ability to stop press owners
from setting certain things to the page. That reflects the reality of the
publishing mediums we depend on today. That should be worrisome.

I'm stopping short of suggesting a legal solution, but just speaking to this
as an important social principle, we should all be disgusted with the conduct
from the major online platform providers. Such general, widely-used platforms
are betraying the public and our principles and values in favor of open
dialogue by working to distort the landscape of public opinion and curtail the
speech of the political, philosophical, or moral enemies of the corporate
overlords.

~~~
skybrian
Sheer size can certainly be scary, but consider that Google and Facebook got
where they are by excluding stuff people don't want.

Google has used page rank from the very beginning to show popular pages. Since
then, there have been a zillion other teaks to search ranking. (Not to mention
that Gmail's spam filtering was an attractive early feature.)

Facebook started out excluding people who didn't go to a particular college,
and later, the friend graph helped people avoid communication with strangers.

More recently, Snapchat showed that auto-deletion of photos is something
people really like, even if it's technically "impossible" to do perfectly
securely.

So it's not just about big companies being in control. Filtering is a really
popular feature. Companies that did it well attracted users and became big.

------
beloch
I'm a canuck who has worked with Turks and has visited Turkey. They're a
wonderful people from a beautiful country with a real problem of a person in
power. Turkey is almost entirely Muslim, yet they produce alcohol and tolerate
its consumption within their borders, even by their own people. Let that fact
sink in for a moment. Erdogan is subverting the _premier secular democracy_ of
the Islamic world, but nobody seems to _care_.

Turkey is _nothing_ like the common stereotypes we have of it in the West, but
Erdogan is a guy who, I think, wants to change that. A wonderful human being
who I've had the privilege of knowing is currently in prison in Turkey on
absolutely baseless accusations[1]. Nobody in Canada gives a damn because he
was an "Imam", and that's a scary word apparently.

People in the West need to wake up and do their due diligence on Erdogan's
regime. There's some seriously scary stuff happening because of this guy.

[1][http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calgary/davud-hanci-turkey-
cou...](http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calgary/davud-hanci-turkey-coup-charge-
judge-1.4015590)

~~~
sorenjan
Plenty of people care, but what are we supposed to do about it? Here in Europe
Erdogan makes the headlines from time to time, right before the referendum he
made several speeches where he called the politicians of multiple countries
"descendants of nazis" and similar. Everybody knows that he cares more about
suppressing the Kurds than ISIS. He holds Europe hostage by threatening to
release large amounts of refugees into Europe, not dissimilar to what Qaddafi
did. We've been hearing about the increasing religiosity pretty much since he
took office.

It's one more example of a common pattern where the rural and the urban
population disagrees, due to globalization, increased liberal ideas in cities,
and a switch from manufacturing to service jobs. It seems to be universal that
the rural population is more religious, less prepared for a global economy,
and in general more backwards, yearning for times that aren't here anymore.

~~~
agumonkey
I think we should stop communicating from the top. Many problems right now are
because heads of state, not necessarily people. Erdogan, Putin ...

We should try to get real people to talk, about who they are, what they want
(peace ? surely .. war ? not so sure). So peoples in every nation start to
avoid the national/patriot filter when thinking and voting.

~~~
kyriakos
Erdogan was democratically elected. He's not a dictator (even if he does act
as one at this point) and judging from the referendum results, at least half
of Turks seem to like his direction. It's easy to say those voters are
uneducated or misguided but the fact is that this is how democracy works.
Where I am going with this is that we should not blame just the leader but
also the people who put him there.

~~~
vinay427
Blaming misguided voters only has merit when freedom of the press is available
and people have access to news that does not have significant pro-government
bias. Turkey was ranked #155 out of #180 evaluated countries on this year's
RSF list [1]. If the government controls the information that the people have
access to, it is a little difficult to expect a legitimate democracy, which
requires more than simply valid elections.

[1]: [https://rsf.org/en/ranking_table](https://rsf.org/en/ranking_table)

~~~
slowmotiony
Do the Turks in Germany also enjoy no freedoms? Because they actually support
Erdogan more than Turks in Turkey.

~~~
markvdb
* Many of them identify with their (parents' or grandparents') conservative countryside roots. * A community so much oriented towards Turkey consumes a lot of Turkish (the country) and Turkish (the language) media. * Turkish country media are in Erdogan's pocket. There is not even a semblance of free press anymore in Turkey. * Turkish language media in the EU with an editorial line not pro-Erdogan have been threatened in every possible way, either directly from Turkey or indirectly. Many have ceased to exist. The best example: Zaman in .be and .nl. * Kurdish language media have always been under threat from the Turkish authorities. * The Turkish government has directly ordered the network of Turkish mosques ( [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Presidency_of_Religious_Affair...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Presidency_of_Religious_Affairs) ) abroad to create lists of Gülen supporters. Evidence of these practices has led to a diplomatic incident with at least Belgium. * You may also want to read about media repression inside Turkey like [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Today's_Zaman](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Today's_Zaman) . [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G%C3%BClen_movement#2013_corru...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G%C3%BClen_movement#2013_corruption_scandal) .

------
sethbannon
Meanwhile, in the U.S., the administration is taking down government websites
in an effort to bury climate data and scientific information. Useful to
remember it's not just countries like China and Turkey that try to limit
citizens' access to information.

[https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/energy-
environment/wp/20...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/energy-
environment/wp/2017/04/28/epa-website-removes-climate-science-site-from-
public-view-after-two-decades/)

~~~
candiodari
Important caveat: the US government is reducing _it 's own_ efforts to combat
climate change. That's not censorship.

~~~
sverhagen
I've read through a few definitions of the word "censorship", just now, and I
don't think any of them make this particular distinction.

~~~
briandear
There is a distinction between open government and censorship. Not releasing
information is different than banning people from sharing information. It's
related, but definitely not the same as censorship.

~~~
mjburgess
The problem is this treats the government as a single entity with a uniform
will: yes, if you do that, then the government is merely failing to act rather
than deliberately censoring anything.

However the government isnt a single entity, it is many smaller kingdoms. And
The King _is_ censoring one of his princes internally: preventing the EPA from
releasing data it would like to.

~~~
nebabyte
We're not a fucking monarchy. The entirety of the executive branch serves at
the pleasure of the president.

And he's entirely within his rights to shut programs down; that isn't
censorship. Learn your definitions lest you serve as a strawman for the other
side of the argument.

~~~
cryptarch
Erdogan is within his right to censor.

Does that mean he does not censor?

~~~
candiodari
Erdogan is preventing journalists and private individuals from publishing (or
even talking about in some cases) their opinions. He does it to hide his own
crimes.

This is obviously very different from shutting down a government program.
Trump is the employer of those people. He can tell them what to do. They are
free to go home and say whatever they want, even about these decisions (and
they are, in fact doing that).

Censorship would be Trump arresting the journalists that reported this.

~~~
cryptarch
I consider dismantling environmental agencies criminal in the ethical sense,
but US law obviously does not consider it criminal.

Does Erdogan ever actually violate Turkish law? You call what Erdogan does
criminal, but I'm under the impression you're using "the letter of the law" as
a measure for Trump, and "what's ethical" for Erdogan.

As an aside, Trump and his staff have removed press from press meetings and
refused to let certain question be asked. Those actions aren't arrests but
they don't particularly cultivate a climate of open debate either.

~~~
candiodari
> I consider dismantling environmental agencies criminal in the ethical sense,
> but US law obviously does not consider it criminal.

I don't understand that. Surely this was plainly clear during the election ...
and the electorate made it's viewpoint clear. Therefore in my opinion it is
not just morally right, but an actual moral duty for the US government to at
least tone down the climate research.

We live in a government for the people, by the people. It is NOT a government
for the climate. US government climate actions are predicated upon a majority
of the US population not just agreeing in principle, but willing to pay (a lot
I might add) to make it happen.

> Does Erdogan ever actually violate Turkish law?

Yes.

> As an aside, Trump and his staff have removed press from press meetings and
> refused to let certain question be asked. Those actions aren't arrests but
> they don't particularly cultivate a climate of open debate either.

I fail to see how this is even a little strange. Did you know Obama did the
same ? And so did Bush and Clinton. All have removed reporters and refused
questions.

And frankly, in most cases, for pretty good reasons. At least in the Trump and
Obama cases I've seen the videos, and ... I mean sorry. I may not agree with
Trump, but I agree that those reporters went too far, were warned a few times,
and when they insisted, the president walked away. That, to me, doesn't seem
controversial at all. I don't think I'd have similar patience, I especially
would not have the patience Obama had with reporters (remember ? The birth
certificate. Perhaps (being flexible with perhaps) it was a newsworthy
question for a week or two, but 2 years later they were still pestering him)

------
adtac
[https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Data_dump_torrents#English_W...](https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Data_dump_torrents#English_Wikipedia)

A data dump of all English Wikipedia articles as a torrent. In case you are
not able to access that, here's the direct link:
[https://itorrents.org/torrent/6434C646E33D02F3CDCB9C15F9DF11...](https://itorrents.org/torrent/6434C646E33D02F3CDCB9C15F9DF11A6C2064624.torrent)

On a side note, I think it's fantastic that we have the entire Wikipedia,
possibly the greatest effort towards organizing the world's information, at
our fingertips.

~~~
a3_nm
Further, there are good open-source solutions to read these dumps offline. For
instance Kiwix [http://www.kiwix.org/](http://www.kiwix.org/) which has a
dedicated reader application but also an HTTP server (very useful if you want
to run a local mirror), and Aard Dict on Android
[http://aarddict.org/](http://aarddict.org/)

~~~
ThinkingGuy
Thanks for those suggestions. I wasn't aware of Kiwix. It sounds similar to
XOWA, which has worked well for me: [http://xowa.org/](http://xowa.org/)

------
kakamba
As suggested by others, it's a court order. Turkish officials demanded a few
things from wikipedia. The main item was to remove all content where Turkey is
shown supporting ISIS, but they didn't receive a response, and the
repercussion was blocking access nationwide.

~~~
candiodari
In case anyone doesn't know, Erdogan is enriching himself and his family by
having Daesh/ISIS/Islamic state deliver oil to him at bargain prices and
selling it, mostly within Turkey:

[http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-
east/wikileak...](http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-
east/wikileaks-turkey-isis-oil-minister-email-cache-leaks-
claims-a7460736.html)

(and Google for it, there is a lot of proof of this)

So let's stop pretending that this is done due to justice or even legal
"right". This is being done to hide the crimes of the people in power. In this
case, yes, crimes, specifically the government selectively applying the laws,
corruption, and the like.

It is not being done for justice, to protect anyone's reputation from
falsehoods, or ... it's just being done to hide crimes by the government.

~~~
kakamba
I wasn't defending what happened, was rather reporting their reasoning for the
curious. In Turkey justice has become synonymous with Erdogan's and his
party's interests unfortunately.

They prey on the less educated, and banning a major source of knowledge seems
like a very smart move by them.

------
maehwasu
To what degree is Erdogan's regime a problem of not enough democracy, as
opposed to a fundamental problem with democracy itself? (Where democracy = 51%
wins)

~~~
sorenjan
That definition of democracy, where the winner takes all, is from what I've
heard a big problem in Turkey. I think a strong opposition and having several
political parties in the parliament is the best way to avoid the tyranny of
the masses, but the recent referendum in Turkey takes them in the exact
opposite direction.

------
StavrosK
I'm assuming Tor circumvents the ban, correct? I'm going to tell all my
Turkish friends to install Tor and signal, and be sad that Turkey has reached
this point.

~~~
throwaway290417
AFAIK, Tor is blockable because the list of relays is public, and accesses may
invite scrutiny from the authorities. This is a dictator who's reportedly
already imprisoned thousands of common people.

What I do is buy inexpensive server time from common providers in US or
Europe, run a SOCKS tunnel over ssh to that server, and bypass blocks. It'll
appear to be like any other SSH access.

If I need to post something to a website that should not be tracked back to my
own address or my server address, I run tor daemon on the server and use it as
a second SOCKS proxy to proxy the requests the server is forwarding.

I'm not in Turkey but I'm in a country that's taking an authoritarian turn and
may become like Turkey in 5 to 10 years. Good idea to keep all the tools and
know-how ready now, and start covering tracks early.

~~~
candiodari
Reportedly ? Turkey has published exactly how many they arrested. The counter
currently stands on over 100000 people that have at least been fired. At least
30000 have been arrested and imprisoned.

And Diyanet is back. If you don't know. The Ottoman empire, Turkey's
predecessor, felt the need for iron control over mosques. So anyone who
attempted to have mosque without "official curriculum", even a tiny personal
one, in Ottoman territory would quickly find themselves arrested. And to drive
home how serious they were: it is said that nobody got arrested twice for
this. Nobody.

Now Erdogan is famous for directly threatening European leaders for not doing
the same. Essentially, he demands to see European non-Diyanet mosques attacked
if any Turk goes to them, and there are reports of kidnappings and
disappearances (NOT in Turkey, in Europe).

Additionally a whole bunch of Islamic schools (Gulen-movement schools) have
been closed and again there are threats against foreign governments not doing
the same.

Censorship is the least part of this. Sad part is, much of Turkey appears to
agree with these actions.

~~~
nebabyte
> Sad part is, much of Turkey appears to agree with these actions.

What? jeez, why? That's gotta be a pushback/countermovement to something.

What is that majority concerned with/about, immigrant issues or something?
(bad world citizen here, I haven't been keeping up)

------
RichardHeart
Much of this problem comes not from the top, but from the bottom. It's a
terrible idea that people can actually suck, and suck en masse, but it truly
is the case. The bad leader is an emergent consequent of the bad people crying
for him. Shitty leaders aren't the sole purview of Islamic states, but they
seem to be better at generating them than anyone else in recent history.

How do you fix millions of people, so they stop desiring terrible things?
Well, by having a culture that pays better, and marketing it well. And it's
delicate, because their "better" detector isn't working properly already.

------
kyriakos
What triggered this?

Usually Turkish government blocks sites right after a terrorist attack or in
the case of the coup attempt. Is something about to happen?

~~~
forvelin
I'd say it is just some random court order, maybe somebody edited page of
Erdoğan to add some insults, which gave ideas to some judge to get government
reputation.

~~~
ardaozkal
This, maybe?

[https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Recep_Tayyip_Erdo...](https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Recep_Tayyip_Erdo%C4%9Fan&type=revision&diff=775815513&oldid=775814082)

~~~
kyriakos
probably, but if that's the case their reaction is a bit late..

------
jumpkickhit
Are torrents being blocked? What about Kwix and a torrent of Wikipedia?

[http://wiki.kiwix.org/wiki/Main_Page](http://wiki.kiwix.org/wiki/Main_Page)
[http://wiki.kiwix.org/wiki/Content_in_all_languages](http://wiki.kiwix.org/wiki/Content_in_all_languages)

------
quickben
Isn't one of the requirements of being in NATO a democracy?

With moves like this from Turkey, what will happen to the NATO membership?

------
JumpCrisscross
There is some irony in Erdogan's desire for EU membership, last decade,
creating such a primacy of elected leaders (at the EU's behest and guidance)
that the previous guardians of Turkey's secular heritage, the military, is no
longer able to stage a coup against the emerging despot.

------
macawfish
I'm seeing a lot of comments about this structure vs. that structure, but to
paraphrase an old Sufi proverb someone told me, it doesn't matter what the cup
is made of (gold? wood?), it matters what's in the cup (good water?). It
doesn't matter what your government or family structures look like if they
aren't able to facilitate healthy individuals and groups. If they are
facilitating the health of some and the detriment of others, well then they
are wittingly or unwittingly engaging in _selection_. It doesn't matter if
she's your wife or your girlfriend. Is it toxic or growing?

------
nepotism2016
Before Erdogan, Turkey had no middle class. You either lived in remote
villages and lacked education OR you were "rich" thanks to high level of
nepotism. Well, Erdogan changed all this, he moved people to into cities and
these people didn't forget and started to vote for him.

Before then, the Kemalist or secular people were very relaxed, they knew from
history if some how they lost the government, military coup will restore
power. Again, Erdogan changed this.

Even by anti-erdogan majority, Erdogan is seen as the only true politician in
Turkey, he knows how to convince or play people/groups. Just ask Gulen
Movement!

------
mk89
How come that all dictators have one thing in common?

They don't understand that the more you forbid certain things, the more people
are willing to fight for it.

They should do exactly like in the West: give us the feeling we are free,
while a few companies decide what we have to do, what we have to wear, what we
have to eat :)

This way, your economy flourishes, you are not perceived as a dictator, and
neighbor countries don't want to invade you because of human rights :D

------
yeukhon
I would understand blocking WikiLeaks but blocking Wikipedia is a whole level
of cenorship. Turkish people should reconsider their freedom. I don't live
there and I am not Turk so I can't make more comments not knowing what's
really going on there. God bless.

------
exabrial
I love the Turkish people and the rich cultural heritage of the country, but
everything I hear about Erdogan is pretty scary. My only beef with the people
of Turkey is I wish they'd take a leadership role into making peace with the
Kurds.

------
rdslw
First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out— Because I was not
a Socialist.

Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out— Because I was
not a Trade Unionist.

Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out— Because I was not a Jew.

Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_they_came_..](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_they_came_..).

------
baxtr
So, the question is: What can we do as a community? Come on guys. We have
probably many of the smartest people on this planet reading this shit here
right now.

What can we do? What could be a cool tool, solution, initiative? Ideas
anybody?!

------
jaddood
It seems it is forbidden for the Turks to get cultivated like other people in
the world... We live in an era of lack of information (which is probably like
all other eras)

------
dalbasal
Does anyone know which article in particular triggered this?

~~~
kunaltyagi
This person seems to have more information:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14225719](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14225719)

------
yak0
Turks which knows wikipedia, already know how to use a vpn. It's a ridiculous
decision. Our ruling should find better solutions for such problems

~~~
epmaybe
What problems?

------
ausjke
not quite sure about world politics, but it seems Turkey is backpedaling fast
these days? Maybe one day they can license China's greatwall-firewall IP?

------
agumonkey
Any alternative ? mirrors ? slimmed torrent distribution ?

~~~
ardaozkal
[http://wiki.kiwix.org/wiki/Content/tr](http://wiki.kiwix.org/wiki/Content/tr)

Kiwix is one. I'm currently torrenting Turkish and English wikis
([https://s.ave.zone/d5a.png](https://s.ave.zone/d5a.png)) and will be seeding
for as much as I can.

I kindly as any person who currently resides in Turkey to do the same.

------
gcb0
hn gets useless in threads like this. we badly need a collapse comment tree
feature.

so much off topic flame wars when everyone should be setting up tor nodes.

~~~
krapp
>we badly need a collapse comment tree feature

It's been implemented for a while now. Do you have js disabled?

~~~
zupa-hu
or maybe s/he just didn't notice the [-]

~~~
gcb0
lol. changed my noscript addon and forgot to whitelist HN. thanks for
reminding me

~~~
tripzilch
it's true though, the self-absorbed Americans dominating the top thread with
an argument about (the USA legal definition of) free speech and how it relates
to US specific racial tensions... because they'd rather loudly proclaim their
position in a known argument they've had before than sit back, shut up and
maybe learn something new about a country they don't know about, with a big
problem that can't be explained as "just like in US except for XYZ so they
should just PQR" ( _if only_ , in reality three comments down in the top
thread everyone's forgotten Turkey as the main topic of discussion)

------
PleaseHelpMe
Oh, poor the students there.

------
darkhorn
This is idiocracy!

------
efuquen
I'm pretty disappointed by some of the comments here. Because Turks voted him
in that makes Erdogan's autocratic rule OK? There is no free press, hundreds
of thousands that have had any association with opposition groups have been
jailed, the referendum vote has been widely discredited as fraudulent. Hitler
was voted into office too, I guess that just ended up being the German's
problem? Democracy doesn't die without a majority of the population allowing
it to, that doesn't make it right and that doesn't excuse some of the blase
attitude I see here. You know you can care about something without wanting to
go to war over it.

~~~
arekkas
On a side note, Hitler was not elected into office but came in second in the
election for "Reichskanzler". The NSDAP came out strongest party with 33,1%.
Politicians at that time thought they could tame him if he becomes part of a
coalition. They guessed wrong and he assumed full power.

If you play the Hitler card at least get it right.

~~~
kleiba
Some further explanation:

In the Weimar Republic (the German state between the two worlds wars) the
Reichskanzler (head of government) was not elected directly by the people.
Instead, people voted for parties. The head of state was the President, and it
was him who appointed the Reichskanzler.

In January 1933, President Hindenburg appointed Hitler as Reichskanzler of
Germany.

~~~
mikeash
And that post had very little power. Hitler more or less became an absolute
dictator with the passage of the Enabling Act a few months later. Getting that
act through parliament involved arresting a bunch of opposition members and
intimidating the rest using armed men, so it really wasn't a democratic
process.

~~~
kleiba
...which, as one could argue, brings use nicely back to the original topic of
Turkey.

\- [https://news.vice.com/story/erdogan-is-still-arresting-
his-o...](https://news.vice.com/story/erdogan-is-still-arresting-his-
opponents-in-massive-purge-that-has-surpassed-113000-people)

\- [http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/turkey-
refere...](http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/turkey-referendum-
intimidation-unfair-campaigning-watchdog-observer-european-
council-a7687206.html)

------
louithethrid
Consider if you will - a diffrent approach to infrastructure altogether. There
are no cables, no centralized Servers - just wifi capable devices.

How does it route, i hear you asking? It routes by likelihood of connection to
social plankton. Social plankton is every group your device ever connects to-
and is constituted by those members of the group, which who can gather the
most "Yes"-votes about theire prediction, of the behaviour of the group. Take
a bus filled with people driving to work. They always constitute from slightly
diffrent devices, but the time is always the same, the amount of devices is
always the same- and there is always that one deciding device - belonging to
the social plankton "transportation-company" without the plankton would never
come together.

Now lets take the greatest possible counter example: A convention of bus
drivers, riding on a bus to the first convention of its kind. They would
debate alot, and agree upon it beeing a bus- but neither could secure a
majority - which bus it is. None of the driving by social plankton - called
houses and cars, is able to identify the bus of busses, thus a new social
plankton class is created.

How does a adress in this add-hoc net look like? It consists of a Unique
identifier, wrapped into layers of social plankton, sorted by likelihood. The
social organism city is likely to know the social organism university within.
The key ingredient is, that inner-plankton, can be encrypted and decrypted
only after arrival at the outter plankton.

So this allows for -extremely slow, in extremely big burst- communication to
happen. Without any IP-Provider or Infrastructure Controll authority having a
hand on it.

Even better, it allows for Meta-Organisms to host services. Lets say, i have a
shard of Wikipedia on my cellphone, and im part of the opt-in plankton
"FreeSociety", any request to a wikipedia server, that bounces with no return
off the web, could bounce back through the social organisms internal, until it
reaches me, gets a package returned, and the web is down but the gate is up.

~~~
DanielBMarkham
I believe you're on to something, and there is a technical solution here.
(Mainly I believe that because it's something I've been saying for years <g>)

Here in the states, the NSA was allowed to view data on telephone calls 3 or 4
levels out from a terrorist. So, for instance, if a terrorist called A, and A
called B, and B called C, and so on? The NSA could track C or D.

The argument against that is that it would cover something like 80 or 90% of
the population.

Well, there you go. Assume one trillion connected devices and each device is
accessible through a "path" of connected devices over 4 or 5 hops, with a
percentage_success and average_network_lag time tracked for each path.

Add in a few GB of buffering and the requirement that every connected device
use up 10-20% of its bandwidth on public, anonymous access, and you've got a
mesh system that's decentralized.

The only other limit I'd add is probably some kind of rules to prevent
DDOSing, say a 64Kb message size and a few other things like that.

It's just a math problem.

~~~
louithethrid
You are right there- but its not just a math problem. Once people would use
it, the usual suspects would show up and start to warp this distributed web.

Despots would add sinks that suck in all messages, by pretending to be a known
plankton/connection.

Also assume that traditional isps would first try to subvert it and then try
to replace it by providing a similar walled in service - warning from the
dangerous open source network.

The whole thing would have to be constructed in away like the TOR-Network,
preventing the identification of sender and reciver before Arrival.

Finally i think the problem remains, that any sufficiently enough supressing
regime, would force its citizens to uninstall such software.

~~~
nebabyte
> Finally i think the problem remains, that any sufficiently enough supressing
> regime, would force its citizens to uninstall such software.

Not force to uninstall - rather regulate, requiring licensure for operation;
giving people a reason to be complacent. (Likely in the name of
counterterrorism/child safety/etc)

Still, you have a decent grasp of the situation, which is much appreciated.
Anyone who still thinks interpolitical issues can be swept away by some "just
invent X" has either not lived long enough to know better or are doomed to the
delusion that "it's the next one" until they die.

------
davidf18
Why can't there be some sort of peer-2-peer Wikipedia or in fact any database
that keeps people from blocking it?

------
thinknot
>People in the West need to wake up and do their due diligence on Erdogan's
regime. There's some seriously scary stuff happening because of this guy.

Honest question, why should the west care about every single problem that
happens anywhere in the world? Why should we spend billions in wars, shed lots
of our own blood, etc? Haven't we had enough of that?

~~~
cryptarch
In the case of western Europe, we should care because we don't have internal
OR external border controls, and Turkey is a neighboring country with a lot of
refugees to dump on us.

I wish I understood why there isn't a move to reinstate border checks in the
Schengen area.

It seems ludicrous to me to keep internal borders open when it is clear that
the external borders have failed.

~~~
jstanley
All borders should be abolished. No human being has the right to tell any
other human being where he can or can't go (with the exception of trespassing
on private property, of course).

~~~
ue_
>(with the exception of trespassing on private property, of course).

This ought to be removed too, along with the whole concept of property.

~~~
cryptarch
Be the change you want to see!

Go ahead and abolish all your own property, you're free to do so.

Or was it more about you wanting to be entitled to product of your fellow
man's labor?

~~~
ue_
>Go ahead and abolish all your own property, you're free to do so.

I do not own any private property.

>Or was it more about you wanting to be entitled to product of your fellow
man's labor?

No; in fact, the exact opposite. It is about the worker owning the product of
his own labour, rather than having it appropriated when production has
finished. To each according to his labour.

~~~
andai
You've figured out something very important, which is that as an employee, you
never get to see most (ie. _all_ , beyond the limit of your wage) of the value
you create.

~~~
ue_
Well, I didn't figure it out as much as Marx, Engels, Kropotkin and Proudhon
did.

------
known
Another North Korea?

~~~
andybak
There's a long long path before a country becomes "another North Korea".
Turkey is currently at risk of becoming on par with some of the Gulf states or
maybe a Central Asian republic.

------
someguu
Governments yield too much power, meanwhile citizens keep funding said
governments with ridiculously high taxes.

Trying to fix governments is counterproductive, just need to decentralize
things imho.

~~~
matthewmacleod
What do you mean by "decentralise"? Smaller-scope government at a local level?
Anarcho-syndicalism?

I suspect many of the same issues would appear.

~~~
cies
> What do you mean by "decentralise"? Smaller-scope government at a local
> level? Anarcho-syndicalism?

Yes.

> I suspect many of the same issues would appear.

Nope. When democracy is small enough, the leaders are very close to their
voters. This changes everything. See small democratic countries, they do much
better at being democratic! I think we can make it smaller, and have the
democratic process at neighbourhood/village level. Then go up from there with
committees filled with delegates from the local-democracies that are for a
specific topic (hospitals in the region, roads, schools -- anything local-
democracies want to collaborate with others upon). All taxation and voting
should happen on the lowest level.

~~~
gkya
> All taxation and voting should happen on the lowest level.

While I too am tinkering with these ideas, the trouble with this is that we
_need_ massive infrastucture work even outside the context of totalitarian
self-promotion; and this is not achievable with small-scale local governments.
Nowadays nobody is self-sufficient, as even the most simple things we use
require material and labour from all over the world [1] that needs to be
excavated, processed, produced, moved, bought and sold. I think that if we
were to limit all governments to city-state like beings, economical macro-
structures that will be more powerful than those states would form in no time.

Also, as today the term _worker_ has so less to do with the worker of the past
two centuries, most of the theories become more and more irrelevant. If we
want a better today, we need newer theories. That's exactly what the
totalitarians are doing, they're using new methods and theories of marketing
to succeed their way to domination of economical systems.

Many utopias are possible, but at the end of the day, if it's not utopia
everywhere, it's utopia nowhere. A country cannot isolate itself from the
outer world in their excess of happines because that last one depends on
global welfare today. It's not the ages that you could stay safe when there's
conflict thousands of kilometres away anymore.

[1] a nice illustration of this is the famous I, pencil:
[http://www.econlib.org/library/Essays/rdPncl1.html](http://www.econlib.org/library/Essays/rdPncl1.html)

~~~
cies
> the trouble with this is that we need massive infrastucture work

Sure. :)

But there are two options. Small steps in the right direction (need a lot of
work), or revolution (needs even more work).

> I think that if we were to limit all governments to city-state like beings,
> economical macro-structures that will be more powerful than those states
> would form in no time.

Ok. In some cases these structures maybe beneficient, even started on behalf
of the small-scale super autonomous self-governments. If not those small-scale
govts can just ban (or not give them money anymore) them; they are autonomous.

> Also, as today the term worker has so less to do with the worker of the past
> two centuries

True in the west. Workers here are now "priviledged workers", our economies in
the west in need of cheap labor in other places. There the "worker" still
exists in its classical form. Here we have a new form, but if you look closely
you still see many. To me it is simple, I see capitalists (defined as never
"have to" work to survive a fancy life time), and non-capitalists (used to
have been referred to as "workers").

> Many utopias are possible, but at the end of the day, if it's not utopia
> everywhere, it's utopia nowhere.

That raises the bar very high. I look more at it as a one
village/neighbourhood at the time kind of thing.

Do you know "I pencil" from Corbett? He's an agorist I believe, dunno. I'm
more towards mutualism/anarchism/market-socialism; as I think private property
should have limits (otherwise those ideologies are quite similar).

