Updated, 5:55 p.m. | The Turkish government blocked access to YouTube on Thursday, after an audio recording was uploaded to the platform in which the foreign minister and senior military and intelligence officials could be heard discussing the security situation in Syria.
Several Turks posted images of the blocked site on Twitter, and a spokeswoman for Google, which owns the video-sharing platform, said in a statement, “We’re seeing reports that some users are not able to access YouTube in Turkey. There is no technical issue on our side and we’re looking into the situation.â€
As the English-language Hurriyet Daily News reports, Turkey’s foreign ministry said in a statement that the audio was recorded during “a top-secret meeting in the foreign minister’s office.†The conversation concerned plans to secure a site of historical significance to Turks in a part of northern Syria under the control of Islamist militants. Officials insisted, however, that the audio had been “distorted†through editing before being posted online.
The discussion concerned measures Turkey might take to secure the tomb of Suleyman Shah, a monument which is about 15 miles inside Syria, but is guarded by Turkish troops under an agreement signed with France in 1921, after the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire.
Reports in the Turkish press said that Islamist militants in Syria had threatened to attack the Turkish enclave in a video posted on YouTube last week unless Turkey lowered its flag and withdrew its troops.
Although the authenticity of the leaked audio about Turkey’s planned response to this threat remains in dispute, Ilhan Tanir, Washington correspondent for the Turkish daily Vatan, noted that links to the transcript, and an English translation of the audio had been posted on other sites, including Dropbox.
Despite the spread of information online, the government also moved to ban reporting on the leaked audio by news organizations in Turkey, Emre Peker of The Wall Street Journal noted.
Last week, Turkey banned Twitter in an attempt to stop the sharing of links to the audio recordings, which government officials say are based on illegal wiretaps but manipulated before being posted online, so that they seem to support what they call false allegations of corruption or wrongdoing.
Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan told supporters at a campaign rally that YouTube was being used in a dirty tricks campaign against his government before local elections. In recent weeks, dozens of wiretapped conversations among senior figures have been published on the site anonymously. “They even leaked a national security meeting,†Mr. Erdogan said on Thursday, according to a Reuters translation. “This is villainous, this is dishonesty,†he added. “Who are you serving by doing audio surveillance of such an important meeting?â€
As they did after the ban on Twitter, many Turks reported on Thursday that they were using technical measures to circumvent the block on YouTube.
Mr. Erdogan’s critics joked online about his supposed attempt to move Turkey out of the Internet age, and even mocked the physical tenor of his voice, which, according to Hurriyet, was so degraded by the “punishing nature of his campaign†schedule that he was forced, on Thursday, “to deliver his hard-hitting message in an unbefitting, falsetto.â€
Video of Turkey’s prime minister as he railed against social networks on Thursday despite almost losing his voice.Mr. Erdogan’s high-pitched voice at the campaign rallies led some of the 12 million Turks on Twitter to share jokes about a supposed plot against him by the “helium lobby,†using the Turkish-language tag #helyumlobisi.
In an open letter to Mr. Erdogan published earlier this week, the editors of Hurriyet, which is part of the larger Dogan Group, accused the prime minister of smearing the newspaper as part of a wider crackdown on dissent.
In their letter, the editors angrily rejected the prime minister’s allegation that they had only printed reports critical of his government because they were being blackmailed by supporters of the cleric Fethullah Gulen, whose movement is blamed by the prime minister for the campaign of leaks.
“If the state or some other circles have anything in their hands to implicate the Dogan Group, or any information or document that can embarrass us,†the editors of Hurriyet wrote, “it should be disclosed and legal action should be taken. However, we should note that the act of keeping us under such accusations, as if there is evidence, accords neither with justice nor with conscience.â€
They ended their letter with an appeal to Mr. Erdogan to scale back his rhetorical attacks on critics:
Mr. Prime Minister, We have never engaged in a political war with our publication and we will never do so. Our commitment is to Turkey, to the rule of law and to democracy. We expect you to not discriminate between citizens and institutions as the prime minister of 76 million people. Whatever percentage of votes you get, it should be your and all of our duty after the elections to defuse the dangerous polarization and tension that has spread throughout the whole country.
Zeynep Tufekci, a Turkish sociologist, suggested in a blog post published before YouTube was blocked, but as Mr. Erdogan railed against the site in speeches, “is not trying to block social media as much as taint it,†in the eyes of his supporters.
This is what Erdogan is now doing to social media: portray it as a place from which only ugly things come from, and which poses a danger to family and to unity. Given that Turkey has a civil war that has erupted on its border with Syria, and is housing millions of distraught refugees, it is not hard to understand why people fear anything that they see as fomenting “disunity.â€
In an update to her post published on Thursday â€" after copies of the latest audio leak were posted on other video-sharing platforms, including Vimeo and Daily Motion â€" Ms. Tufekci argued that Mr. Erdogan’s administration was not naïve about the technological impossibility of sealing off Turkey from the Internet.
the content is not blockable, and this is quite obvious to the Turkish government which has many technologically competent people, including the minister of foreign affairs who was a frequent twitter user and I have once watched discuss the power of social media with “Arab Spring†youth where it was clear he knew what he was talking about (and quite smooth about it). These blocks are meant to demonize social media content, and dissuade Erdogan supporters from seeking them, knowing what to seek, and being motivated to seek. If they know what to look for, and if they are motivated to want to look for it, circumvention remains possible.
An interesting confirmation of the difference is remembering what PM Erdogan had said about the previous YouTube ban which had come about because of content that the government does not truly care about. When asked about the ban, he had said: “I go to it,†meaning that he circumvented, “You can too.†Now, in contrast, he devouts good chunks of his limited time in political rallies decrying Twitter and YouTube (and also Facebook) as places that threaten families and are source of lies and evil.
Follow Robert Mackey on Twitter @robertmackey.
