Ban on Wikipedia leaves Turks fretting as censorship intensifies under Erdogan

Istanbul

BARIS Dede, a game design student, had a question: how easily did Viking longboats glide through the water? Dilara Diner, a psychologist, wanted to double-check a symptom of hysteria.

But these Turks were not able to quickly find out what they wanted. Since late April, the Turkish government has blocked one of the world's go-to sources of online information, Wikipedia.

After Wikipedia refused to remove unflattering references to Turkey's relationship with Syrian militants and state-sponsored terrorists, officials simply banned the whole site.

Several weeks into the ban, some Turks are still struggling to remove Wikipedia searches from their muscle memory.

Yaman Akdeniz, a law professor, turned by habit to Wikipedia to find out when the latest "House of Cards" episode was released.

"You forget that it's blocked, and then you click on it and then - boomph, nothing. You realise you can't access it," said Dr Akdeniz, describing his personal form of digital whiplash. Many people didn't realise until after it was blocked, he said, that Wikipedia "was so much a part of our lives". But beyond the problems it has created for the curious, Turkey's Wikipedia ban is a reminder of something darker, government critics say: a wholesale crackdown on free expression and access to information, amid wider oppression of most forms of opposition.

Wikipedia is just one of 127,000 websites blocked in Turkey, estimated Dr Akdeniz, who has led legal challenges against the Wikipedia ban and other web restrictions. An additional 95,000 pages, like social media accounts, blog posts and articles, are blocked on websites that are not otherwise restricted, he said.

For web activists in Turkey, Wikipedia is simply the latest victim of a wave of online censorship that grew steadily from 2015 onward and then surged significantly after last year's failed coup. The coup attempt gave President Recep Erdogan the political cover to expand a crackdown on his opponents, including in the traditional news media. NYTIMES