
Social media shutdown in Turkey - doener
https://turkeyblocks.org/2016/11/04/social-media-shutdown-turkey/
======
triplesec
Here's the reason: [http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-
europe-37868441](http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-37868441) More
political prisoners: The Pro-Kurdish HDP opposition party's leaders and
several MPs have been arrested by the Government.

~~~
draw_down
Indeed. So this shouldn't be perceived as just a matter of internet
censorship, there is more going on than just that.

------
myf01d
Turkey, Qatar and Saudi Arabia -> Friends

Syria, Iran and Russia -> Enemies

That's how pay for play works, everybody. If you don't pay, your government is
labeled as a dictatorship. Simply fallen from the US grace. The UN is just a
diplomatic tool to discredit you and NATO is another tool to kill you.

~~~
hackuser
I'm pretty confident that it has nothing to do with pay, but with geopolitics.
In fact, I think the U.S. generally gives them more money (and other aid) than
vice versa. The former three are allies and provide essential value to the
U.S. Off the top of my head:

Turkey gives NATO an very valuable geopolitical position, with leverage as the
most powerful nation in the Mideast neighborhood, as well as dominating the
Black Sea and eastern Mediterranean, and providing a position on the southern
flank of Russia, eastern flank of the Balkans (less essential post-Cold War),
and a stable border with countries to the east and south. Turkey as an enemy
would be a serious headache.

Qatar and especially Saudi Arabia, the wealthiest and most powerful Arab
state, give the U.S. leverage and stability (at least for decades until
recently) in the Mideast, which, due to the oil supply, is essential to world
peace and prosperity. They also counter-balance to Iran.

Those benefits don't necessarily justify supporting oppression, but those are
very serious considerations.

~~~
not_ed_snow
I believe that's what parent referred to as the "pay" part.

Maybe more accurately would be "play ball with us or with nobody".

~~~
hackuser
EDIT: That's not what the commenter says below:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12869673](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12869673)

------
reimertz
It's breaking my heart watching a democracy slowly being suppressed and
manipulated into a dictatorship.

I wish the people will find ways to stand up for their rights and initiate a
peaceful revolution.

~~~
brassic
They don't need a revolution. They need to stop voting for Erdogan.

~~~
myf01d
> Still believes that voting changes the result in Turkey

------
dibstern
ITT: Anti-west propaganda commenters, somehow relating censorship issues in
Turkey to the "evil west"

~~~
fusiongyro
A lot of bright green account names too.

------
gesman
Need peer-to-peer IoT mesh networks with spillover across the borders.

~~~
viraptor
In case the government wants to shut down communication that's a very bad
idea. In a global network, it's relatively easy to hide traffic in other
traffic. Encapsulation and encryption work just fine.

In a physical world, if you want a mesh (RF I'm guessing) network, it's
trivial to figure out who's forwarding. You can do that with a cheap scanner
and go straight to the doors of people running nodes. If you're trying to stay
stealthy and secure from gov/mil, radio mesh is a terrible idea.

~~~
kovrik
Is there a secure solution for that problem in a physical world then?

~~~
gesman
If _everyone_ is transmitting, including their fridge, coffee machine and
alarm clock - that would change the game.

------
lathiat
Reasons why I chose not to fly through Istanbul next week :/ Price was
cheaper, but gave the 'ol cheapest flight policy a kick to the curb.

Now I get to make a stopover in Tunisia instead... mmhmm.

------
preexo
Good that people are working on those kind of projects like
[https://freedomboxfoundation.org/doc/flyer.pdf](https://freedomboxfoundation.org/doc/flyer.pdf)

~~~
dogma1138
You still need internet for this to work ;) these boxes only work in places
where the internet isn't going to be shut down on a whim.

Countries that are willing to blanket the internet and do mass arrests aren't
exactly the place where you want to be caught with those things.

This is the problem with all the so called "freedom" tools (tails, tor,
various vpns etc.) and it is that they essentially only provide safe "freedom"
to people who are already generally free.

~~~
jospoortvliet
well you can run something like the nextcloud box on a local network, no
problem, and it's super cheap, too. If government blocks the pipes to services
like Twitter etc, that sucks but doesn't block local, self-hosted services.
They are hard to block unless you take down the entire internet - and THAT is
an economic issue.

LMGTFY - [https://nextcloud.com/box](https://nextcloud.com/box)

~~~
dogma1138
Again this is utterly pointless in any case where you live in a country that
has no issues with blocking internet access.

You somehow think that a government that blocks the internet on a regular
basis would have a problem blocking a distributed P2P network if it posed a
threat?

All ISP's do DPI these days, many ISP's don't allow users to host services in
the first place.

No to mention that the existence of the Box alone can put you at risk of
harassment if not imprisonment.

Freedom tools are great if you live in a country that won't send you to prison
for using a VPN, people seem to do not understand how oppressive regimes work.

------
enraged_camel
I just got back from visiting family in Turkey.

Turkey is in a really weird place. On the one hand, Erdogan is a corrupt
tyrant who has done some inexcusably horrible things. On the other hand, he
has thoroughly cleaned the _cemaat_ infestation. For the record, _cemaat_
refers to people loyal to a man named Fethullah Gulen, who is a radical
Islamist and a very controversial figure in Turkey. You can read more about
him here:

[http://www.city-journal.org/html/who-
fethullah-g%C3%BClen-13...](http://www.city-journal.org/html/who-
fethullah-g%C3%BClen-13504.html)

Anyway, Internet blockages like this usually precede widespread police
operations. Based on what I can gather from Turkish newspapers right now, it
looks like HDP headquarters is being raided by the police as part of a terror
investigation (which is kind of a big deal). HDP is a pro-Kurdish, pro-
minority party that got a lot of votes in the last election and prevented
Erdogan's AKP from reaching parliamentary majority.

~~~
dogma1138
Hitler got rid of the brown coats when he didn't need them anymore also.

Fethullah Gulen and Erdogan were besties until about 3 years ago.

It's also a bit funny that you call this guy
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fethullah_G%C3%BClen](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fethullah_G%C3%BClen)
a Terrorist, if he is he has the best poker face of all of them so far.

While he probably has more than one agenda, neither the US, Israel nor any EU
nation has never put him or his followers on any watch list, and at least
publicly he strongly condemned any act of terrorism and incitement. He is such
and "islamist" that he was probably the only major religious leader that
didn't put the blame on Israel for the Flotilla incident and rather said that
the organizers should have cooperated with them and put more effort into
ensuring that radicals would not join the flotilla, this doesn't exactly seem
like something a Terrorist would say publicly on several occasions and
probably didn't made him any friends on either side of the political spectrum.

If you want here is a decent paper on him and his movement by the German
Institute for International and Security Affairs [https://www.swp-
berlin.org/fileadmin/contents/products/resea...](https://www.swp-
berlin.org/fileadmin/contents/products/research_papers/2014_RP02_srt.pdf)

~~~
enraged_camel
I never called him a terrorist. Please read more carefully.

Also, since you obviously haven't read the link I provided, here's an excerpt
from a speech he gave in 1999 in which he talks about... well, I'll let you be
the judge:

 _" You must move in the arteries of the system without anyone noticing your
existence until you reach all the power centers. . . . Until the conditions
are ripe, they [the followers] must continue like this. If they do something
prematurely, the world will crush our heads, and Muslims will suffer
everywhere, like in the tragedies in Algeria, like in 1982 [in] Syria, . . .
like in the yearly disasters and tragedies in Egypt. . . . The time is not yet
right. You must wait for the time when you are complete and conditions are
ripe, until we can shoulder the entire world and carry it. . . . You must wait
until such time as you have gotten all the state power, until you have brought
to your side all the power of the constitutional institutions in Turkey . . .
. Now, I have expressed my feelings and thoughts to you all—in confidence . .
. trusting your loyalty and secrecy. I know that when you leave here, [just]
as you discard your empty juice boxes, you must discard the thoughts and the
feelings that I expressed here._"

~~~
revelation
That sounds like the Zionist Diaries. Or maybe it's that long missing one from
Hitler himself?

~~~
toyg
Tbh it could come from any "revolutionary" pablum, simply because that's how
you do it: put your avanguardist elements in place until conditions are right
for the "big switch". Even legitimate parties in legitimate democracies follow
this rulebook to reach and maintain power.

