Turkey Says "No More YouTube"

This is the site that appears when residents of Turkey attempt to go to YouTube, the popular video sharing site owned by Google. The text, translated to English, reads “Access to www.youtube.com site has been suspended in accordance with decision no: 2007/384 dated 06.03.2007 of Istanbul First Criminal Peace Court.”

The reason for the ban: a video, which has now been taken down, showing Greeks criticizing Turkey and insulting Turkey’s national flag and founding father, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk. A good background story is here, and the news broke on this site (in Turkish only).

All public internet access in Turkey is provided by Turk Telecom via adsl, so the takedown is relatively simple.

A group of Turkish bloggers has said that they will try to fight this in Turkey, and get YouTube reinstated. See the Times for more information.