Twitter is blocked in Turkey - aacanakin
======
berkay
Many sites including Youtube did get blocked in the past, but safe to say this
one is different. It is an explicit attempt to silence non-traditional media
by the government. They have been working on controlling the traditional media
(TV, newspapers, etc.) for a long time.

Recently, social media has been making a bigger impact, hence the explicit
play. Current administration sees itself in an existential struggle and
willing to do anything to stay in power. The model that they aspire seems to
have switched from the west to Russia/China.

Whether they will be able to succeed in silencing social media will have
implications beyond Turkey.

~~~
etunescafe
I think you are absolutely right.

------
poulsbohemian
I was there on business in 2010 and I said "man, this is a country on the
move! We need to set up an office here." English is taught from early grades,
there is good infrastructure in the western part of the country, a young,
educated population with a relatively small domestic economy - great place to
outsource and a bridge between europe and asia. Things have fallen apart so
quickly since then - wouldn't touch it now. Hope things get back on track, as
there is so much potential.

~~~
egari
it was an illusion. yes i am from istanbul.

~~~
sunberries
I am from Istanbul too and I agree on this. Only 3-4 of the larger cities look
like they're more modern.

~~~
theverse
Istanbul is modern? Sorry but Istanbul is a shithole when compared to some of
the other Turkish western coast cities. What makes it interesting in the
global scale is the level of its diversity.

An ex Istanbul resident.

~~~
sunberries
I did say it was "more modern". I lived there for 22 years as a minority and
have been treated like an animal in the zoo, and don't think I'll ever live in
Turkey again.

------
guard-of-terra
Internet is falling apart. I think that appreciation for free speech, press
and freedom of expression is lower today than it was for a long time of recent
history. "They" just push and push on it and we're helpless. Not even
constrained by paying it lip service.

Do we still have non-violent ways to counter this and make our voice heard?
Because otherwise violent ways become aspired.

~~~
egeozcan
I'm getting depressed by these kind of news. My votes do not seem to change
anything and I feel hopeless. I can't find anything meaningful to say and I
just want to ignore the whole situation but keeping silent just feels wrong.

~~~
jliechti1
Don't despair completely.

Not Internet related, but there are some large students going on in Taiwan
right now [0] based on concerns on how a new trade agreement with China was
passed. The bill was passed in a legal way, but many of the discussions around
it were behind closed doors and the Taiwanese people feel that the government
is no longer "representing the people." The response against has been pretty
described as "unprecedented", people who are normally not interested in
politics are getting involved to see how they can help.

" _We do not want to clash with the police...we just have to let the
government know that never try to fool the people._ "[1]

I find their vigilance inspiring. This level of spontaneous organization seems
difficult to carry out in the US though. Taiwan is considerably smaller than
the US, and I think that makes a large difference unfortunately.

[0]: [http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-03-19/taiwan-students-
occ...](http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-03-19/taiwan-students-occupy-
legislature-over-china-trade-pact-vote.html)

[1]: [http://www.cnn.com/2014/03/19/world/asia/taiwan-student-
prot...](http://www.cnn.com/2014/03/19/world/asia/taiwan-student-protests/)

EDIT (to respond to guard-of-terra): > "Turns out they just sit in their
office and pretend nothing happens."

Definitely a valid point. We shall see how long this sustains for.To clarify,
when I say "getting involved" I mean many people are taking to the streets,
not just armchair activism.

~~~
guard-of-terra
Don't want to discourage you but we had this "unprecedented, people who are
normally not interested in politics are getting involved" thing in Moscow a
few years ago and it all died out. Turns out they just sit in their office and
pretend nothing happens. And it works unless you actively overthrow them.

Of course they say Russians are a nation of slaves but there you go.

~~~
egeozcan
The same happened in Turkey last summer too. You might have heard, "the Gezi
protests". Looking back, the whole thing just made everyone a bit more extreme
on their views. Some government officials just ignored the situation while the
prime minister went on a campaign to stop the so called "looters" (yes he did
call the protesters that) from "disrespecting the public opinion". Now? It's a
flame war between many groups, with some scandals here and there for what it
seems to be entertainment only. Everyone, and I mean everyone -including me-
seems to ignore everything opposed to what they believe. I try to be
objective, but I can't. People believe in "stuff". I'm still getting amazed by
how interested we are in believing in something and the lengths we can go just
to keep our beliefs' integrity.

~~~
guard-of-terra
"Looking back, the whole thing just made everyone a bit more extreme on their
views."

Yeah, that's exactly what we had in Russia. The protests were about rigged
elections. They also happened to be peaceful. Nevertheless, you can now find a
lot of people who call protester names as if that was something provably bad.
You can also find a lot of people who outright support everything the state do
- thing you could not find before. A lot of people switched from "not caring"
to "actively fearing change and swearing on any critique of status quo".

------
makmanalp
Background info:

This is hypothesized to be a reaction to a series of audio recordings that
were anonymously released over time. These were ridiculously damning, clearly
someone is tapping phones without anyone else's knowledge.

Previously:

[http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/feb/27/turkish-pm-
corr...](http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/feb/27/turkish-pm-corruption-
youtube-recep-tayyip-erdogan) [http://www.al-
monitor.com/pulse/iw/contents/articles/origina...](http://www.al-
monitor.com/pulse/iw/contents/articles/originals/2014/02/erdogan-corruption-
audio-bilal-graft-probe-police-money.html)
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2013_corruption_scandal_in_Turk...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2013_corruption_scandal_in_Turkey)

Some highlights from the "alleged" recordings so far:

\- PM calling to get news about an opposing party removed from a TV channel
multiple times

\- Modifying political poll results to manipulate public opinion

\- Getting people of opposing opinions fired

\- Buying a large paper shredder to destroy documents

\- PM calling son to ask how much money there is at home, son replies saying
about 1 trillion, then switches to 3-5 kurush (cents in turkish).

\- PM calling son to say "they're raiding the houses, zero out the money". Son
says there's only 30 million euros left.

\- Call to order the judges to be fixed, and says that a specific person is to
be imprisoned.

\- Trying to manipulate who goes on the supreme court.

\- Says "ignore the prosecutor who's running the corruption investigations".
Orders documents ripped up.

(source:
[http://www.hurriyet.com.tr/yazarlar/25981622.asp](http://www.hurriyet.com.tr/yazarlar/25981622.asp))

The official reason for the shutdown is that there were sexual photos of some
poor citizen released on twitter against her will, and she complained but
twitter refused to take them down. So they decided to shut down the entire
website. Yeah, right.

Of course this is ominous that at the end of this month, the local elections
will take place. No coincidence.

It's surreal how all this is going down. It's like watching a conspiracy
theory movie. Blatant shills everywhere, media manipulation abounds, blatant
lies heard on TV from the horse's mouth. We were all skeptical already, it's
inevitable when you live in a third world country for years, but wow. When you
hear the insiders actually talking to each other, it's a whole new level.

more news on this specific event: [http://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/turkey-
blocks-twitter-after...](http://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/turkey-blocks-
twitter-after-erdogan-vowed-
eradication.aspx?pageID=238&nID=63884&NewsCatID=338)
[http://www.aljazeera.com/news/europe/2014/03/turkey-
erdogan-...](http://www.aljazeera.com/news/europe/2014/03/turkey-erdogan-
threatens-ban-twitter-2014320165956732467.html)

Related old post here:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7189577](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7189577)

edit: Erdogan stated a few days ago that he didn't care what the world
thought, and he would eradicate twitter. He said "how dare they listen to our
encrypted phone conversations". It's expected that on the 25th, something huge
is going to be released that might sway the elections bigtime. Whoever is
posting these are doing it slowly and deliberately, a few days at a time,
building up anticipation. So people think that twitter getting shut down is
probably related to this.

edit2: All recordings were put on youtube by someone:
[https://www.youtube.com/user/haramzadeler333](https://www.youtube.com/user/haramzadeler333)

~~~
valevk
Do you happen to know where I can find translations for the youtube videos?

~~~
makmanalp
I think this is the best you can do right now:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7297985](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7297985)

~~~
valevk
Thank you very much.

------
sentientmachine
Imagine if government had the power to flick a switch place perfect earplugs
and blinders on every human everywhere for a time for some political agenda.

I wonder how far men would go (short of just killing people) to suppress the
right for people to think, in order to suppress some information floating
around in the public space.

Would you flick that switch, to power down an entire nation of drones, just to
prevent them from finding out that you did something evil?

Take care you NEVER give other men the right to shut down your brain from
afar. It WILL be used against you.

------
boolean
Earlier today "Turkey’s Erdogan Now Says He’ll Shut Down Twitter, Too"
[http://time.com/32339/turkey-erdogan-twitter/](http://time.com/32339/turkey-
erdogan-twitter/)

~~~
cclogg
Wow:

“I don’t care what the international community says. Everyone will witness the
power of the Turkish Republic.”

Did he actually say that? In regards to shutting down twitter to stop a
scandal? If you truly weren't responsible for w/e scandal, then wouldn't you
just not care?

Edit: Also that line seems perfect for a James Bond villain lol.

~~~
aytekin
He is really one of those James Bond villains.

The sentence describes his state of mind: He is the best thing for the
country, so any resistance, corruption news, and protest cannot come from
people of this country. It must be a conspiracy of the west. So, by blocking
twitter, he is blocking west's conspiracy. He started believing his own
propaganda.

The truth is people who vote for him is mostly poorer Turks, and those people
don't care about twitter.

~~~
archagon
It seems there are a couple of countries with the same problem in their
leadership. How the F do these people get into power?

~~~
randomafrican
Many of them actually get power-hungry while in power.

Especially the ones who get elected after spending some time in the opposition
under not-so-democratic regimes.

------
devindotcom
I just tried pinging twitter with this tool, the turkey server seems to work:

[http://cloudmonitor.ca.com/en/ping.php?vtt=1395356295&vargho...](http://cloudmonitor.ca.com/en/ping.php?vtt=1395356295&varghost=twitter.com&vhost=_&vaction=ping&ping=start)

but china, egypt, and interestingly panama don't. I'd love to report on this
but it's hard to prove this kind of thing. any ideas? (i'm also contacting
twitter)

edit: here's my story -

[http://www.nbcnews.com/tech/social-media/twitter-blocked-
nat...](http://www.nbcnews.com/tech/social-media/twitter-blocked-nationwide-
turkey-reports-n58276)

please let me know if you see anything wrong. (we're aware of the turkish
character issues...sigh)

~~~
mrtksn
Hi, The method for blocking websites in Turkey is through ISP's DNS servers.
So when you don't use a Turkish ISP DNS server you are all good with most of
the blocked sites. Some websites, especially popular porn sites are blocked
through the IP. In such cases you need a VPN or proxy.

The tool you are using to check Twitter servers probably don't use a Turkish
DNS server.

If you don't believe, check the website status from the Informational
Technology and Communication presidency of Turkey website:
[http://eekg.tib.gov.tr/](http://eekg.tib.gov.tr/)

The court orders are displayed both in English and Turkish.

~~~
devindotcom
Thanks for the information, I'll try to include this in my report.

~~~
mrtksn
You are welcome. If you have any questions feel free to ask, you can reach me
by twitter too: @mrtksn

this is how the DNS Look-up for twitter looks like at the moment:
[http://i.imgur.com/yKmmDYc.jpg](http://i.imgur.com/yKmmDYc.jpg)

I used TTNET's DNS server for this. It's the biggest ISP in the country.

------
gokhan
DNS based block at the moment, IP based one will follow for sure. Please
remember that YouTube was also banned for a couple of years in the past [1].

This is related to the corruption scandal in Turkey, Tayyip Erdogan's
government is trying to stop the release of leaked tapes on social media.

[1]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Censorship_of_YouTube#.C2.A0Tur...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Censorship_of_YouTube#.C2.A0Turkey)

~~~
aalpbalkan
That's old. IP and URL based censorship methods (with TCP packet inspection)
is in place already in Turkey. We have seen various individual URLs getting
blocked related to the the bribery and corruption leaks of PM and other
ministers in past few months. So don't be so hopeful. DNS is not a permanent
solution, they can block it entirely just tomorrow.

------
cturhan
Unfortunately Erdogan is out of control, they use DNS based blocking. I'm
using a VPN service so I can access Twitter, Youtube and other services easily
but in our country probably 0.01% has VPN so this is serious.

------
mullingitover
Ah, blocking twitter, the last refuge of despots[1].

[http://techcrunch.com/2011/01/25/twitter-blocked-
egypt/](http://techcrunch.com/2011/01/25/twitter-blocked-egypt/)

------
aurora72
For the time being, Twitter is accessable from within Turkey using the DNS of
the biggest ISPs of Turkey, 195.175.39.39

~~~
mrtksn
nope, unfortunately it's just your DNS cache.

------
enscr
Twitter has been playing a pivotal role in connecting people and getting the
word out via an unbiased medium. The effect of twitter has been phenomenal
over the past few years in countries that have undergone political revolution.
Much of the reality that the citizens need to know are blacked out by
mainstream media because it's controlled by the government & corporations who
are hand in glove.

Unfortunately, many countries have resorted to a simple fix of policing
twitter. Second unfortunate thing is that twitter is still restricted to the
tech savvy crowd. There's still a sizable population outside third world that
don't know what it is & how to use it. But as long as we have un-policed
social media tools, we might see large scale cleaning in the coming decades.

------
rstml
The real question is why Erdogan took risk an blocked Twitter just 10 days
before elections? The only reason I see is this Twitter account with almost
500.000 followers who is revealing government corruption:
[https://twitter.com/FuatAvni](https://twitter.com/FuatAvni) For English
version of his tweets see:
[https://twitter.com/FuatAvniEng](https://twitter.com/FuatAvniEng) (usually
translation is delayed 1-2 weeks)

------
izelnakri
Reminds me of this scene from Pirates of Silicon Valley:

[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b27Mf6wTZ3w](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b27Mf6wTZ3w)

"It’s about power. It’s like those weird countries man where the army guys
overthrow the president. The first thing that they take over is the way people
communicate; radio, tv, newspapers. Information is power."

Turkish army has nothing to do with this case of course.

~~~
guard-of-terra
In this case I'm not so sure.

They just say: we can take things from you, and you can't do anything about
that. They'll just say that you had them "elected" \- as if someone voting for
them gave them rights to take what is not theirs.

They're just trying to teach the young generation helplessness. You can't do
anything, better learn your VPN, feel fear and don't touch politics. You're a
minority anyway compared to an army of aged citizens so no point in trying.
They're vote for any extortion for a small share of profits.

------
midas007
Crucial services that can be choked off need to be made seamlessly (zero
thinking UX) available via overlay networks (tor, etc).

IOW, if twitter is blocked, there should be a browser plugin / standard thing
that fires itself up and automatically reconnects through said overlay
network.

Because right now, a single domain is a SPoF that govts can flick a switch and
neuter most of their populace's communication.

------
alkank
Irony: Twitter ban being spread to the world via Twitter itself. A perfect
example of how powerful the internet is despite of the governments.

------
mertdumenci
I'm from Istanbul, and I love how this block makes my pro-govt friends say
"Why did they do this?". Twitter is (was?) used extensively in Turkey, and I
feel like this block will end up with the government shooting itself in the
foot by showing their supporters how sad the things they do are. There's no
explanation for this block, and there can't ever be.

------
elwell
Just when you think Turkey is a 1st world country...

~~~
Nux
Yeah, like the UK, right?

------
etunescafe
This is really a shocking news for all the twitter users from Turkey. They
should raise voice against it. by
[http://www.etunescafe.com](http://www.etunescafe.com)

------
kendall__
Sitting in Ataturk airport right now and twitter is working fine.

~~~
inanov
sorry then, we are mistaken.

------
bit2pixel
Something has to be done before this sets an example for other governments.
Freedom cannot be taken away from anyone.

~~~
alkank
Considering the fact that I'm seeing #TwitterisblockedinTurkey as a worldwide
trend despite of the ban I would say they are far from being able to take away
the freedom at all. They will also probably realize that not far from now.

~~~
corin_
The rest of the world tweeting about it doesn't mean that much to Turkish
people as they won't be seeing the trend lists, and their government doesn't
seem to care that the rest of the world is paying attention.

~~~
mrtksn
Actually, censorship is nothing new for Turkey so some serious portion of the
population knows how to overcome it. Probably these tweets are sent mostly by
Turks in Turkey :)

However, this is not the whole story. The current ruling party has huge
support from the uneducated and/or religious masses that may not be that
informed about the technology. Since 3 months new corruption documents are
leaked through twitter, which puts pressure on the PM. Just yesterday there
was a phone conversation of one of the Ministers leaked and apparently the guy
was mocking Islam when he was trying to look like as devoted muslim in front
of the public.

------
tomphoolery
This is so ridiculous. As if someone can't just set up a domain themselves and
release the shit.

~~~
transitionality
How do you promote the domain? That's the real question. Twitter makes it
quick, effortless and free to disseminate really interesting information. It's
slower, more cumbersome, possibly more expensive with other methods, even with
something like email.

~~~
tatar
I think this is why we need an open source twitter / equivalent. Just to
enable people to communicate even in local networks.

------
drawkbox
Lots of things happening around the Black Sea these days. Sochi Olympics,
Crimea and now Turkey.

------
midas007
Does anyone know _how_ it's currently blocked? twitter IP's, BGP or DNS?

~~~
bdd
Implemented via DNS, for now... You can see the court orders about sites from
TIB's (The Presidency of Telecommunication) query site.
[http://eekg.tib.gov.tr/](http://eekg.tib.gov.tr/)

It's a system where every ISP with a license has to abide. They download a
list of domains that needs to be forwarded to a server operated by TIB to
explain the reason of access blocking. They add these to their recursive DNS
servers so traffic goes there. People using another DNS server other than
their ISP's (e.g. Google Public DNS, OpenDNS, etc.) are currently able to
access.

~~~
midas007
Thanks. Just confirmed through channels also.

Highly recommended that people, regardless of location, use encrypted DNS like
OpenDNS to prevent monitoring, malicious in-flight modifications and DNS-based
censorship.

------
kyriakos
turkey made a lot of progress recently. too bad it will all go down the drain
like this.

------
nighthawk24
^ Requesting namecoin based app

------
kayman
sad to see sites being blocked. Can you use Tor to get around this
restriction?

~~~
transitionality
Technically, yes. Usability-wise, no. Most Turkish internet users are mobile-
based, anyway.

~~~
jjh42
See
[https://guardianproject.info/apps/orbot/](https://guardianproject.info/apps/orbot/)
for some easy to use Tor apps for Android.

------
qwerta
Bullshit. I was tweeting from Istanbul just 3 days ago.

~~~
chippy
This is an interesting comment. I think comments similar to this should be
looked at and at least the message evaluated and at most the user profile
examined.

I may start browsing comments which have been downvoted the most to create a
list on political-heavy threads. However it may be difficult to determine
whether the user is a shill or just stupid.

------
kosso
Many people would see this as a good thing.

It's just a big site run by some American company. Amazingly, there are other
ways to communicate.

~~~
theverse
Turks doesn't have fanaticism towards domestic good. It's a central
communication channel that is known to run by people who seems to be fair,
them being American is obviously not relevant to them.

~~~
kosso
I agree. My post was rather tongue-in-cheek actually.

Call me cynical, but it just sometimes strikes me as odd how so many people
around the world now rely on a company designed to make money by selling your
information to communicate with the rest of the world. Especially in today's
post-Snowden-revelations world. It's 'free', but that's how you 'pay'.

It turns out it's a simple DNS block which setting to Google's DNS is fixing
for people.

------
thisiswrong
Then use Twister [1]. Twister is NSA-proof, censorship reistant, and based on
the bitcoin protocol.

[1] [http://twister.net.co/](http://twister.net.co/)

~~~
transitionality
It is nontrivial to switch millions of people over to a completely new
platform and reestablish the literally billions of connections among them, nor
is Twister's infrastructure ready to handle the influx.

For now, Twitter over VPN/TOR is the only workable solution.

------
shn
There are two sides of the coin.

1) In this day and age shutting down Twitter wholesale is simply a silly and
undemocratic move. Information can not be blocked and will find its way around
anyway. Like many people I am against it.

2) There is a blatant violation of personal rights of people by fabricated
phone-tapes. You take it to the court and court decides that these are
illegal, and ask the service provider (in this case Twitter) to take down
those specific twits. They don't comply. What do you do?

Say there's a link for a fabricated phone conversation of Obama betraying the
country disseminated using Twitter. The administration take it to the court
and win the legal battle. Could Twitter afford not to comply? Can this happen?

This is the gist of the problem people are having over there.

~~~
shn
So far this comment got downvoted twice. I bet those who downvote are Turkish.
They are not explaining why did they downvote. They are as good as those that
blocked Twitter in Turkey.

~~~
mrtksn
I've down voted you because you claim that the leaked phone conversations are
fabricated.

few things about it:

1) some of the people involved accepted the authenticity of these
recordings(some directly, some logically)

2) the recordings that were denied being authentic were investigated by audio
forensic experts and they reported that these are real.

3) the pro-government media tried to scam US based audio studios to get
reports to falsify these recordings. for an example, the mainstream pro-akp
media used a report by Kaleidoscope Sound which was later denied by the
studio. You can read their public statement here:
[https://www.facebook.com/KaleidoscopeSound](https://www.facebook.com/KaleidoscopeSound)

4) Other evidence brought to light by the opposition party supports the
authenticity of these recordings.

5) These recordings are part of the legal prosecution.

Though there were some recordings that were made illegally, the fact that the
ruling party actively blocked the legal prosecution lives no choice for the
public to learn about the accusations from the whistleblower.

If the legal process was not blocked it would have been better to wait for the
outcome of the prosecution, but in this case we don't have choice.

~~~
shn
1) All of the recordings? 2) Again, for all the recordings? 3) I checked it
out. They are saying that they do not know if the recordings are authentic.
Since accused can not provide the original recordings actually there's no
point even seeking for such forensic examination. It has to be inconclusive,
that is why illegally obtained wiretappings are rendered always invalid by the
courts. In that case spreading recordings that can not stand such scrutiny is
an attempt of defamation, and illegal. 4) I can not check that. 5) What
prosecution? Does it have a name/date?

Again I am against the blockage. However we need try to understand what could
have pushed the Turkish Courts to take such grave measures.

