Ratcheting up its censorship of the Internet, Turkey blocked access to YouTube Thursday.
The move comes six days after the Turkish government blocked access to Twitter, following Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdo?an’s clashes with an Internet-savvy populace. Twitter users have found multiple ways around the ban, and tweets from within Turkey, along with Tor usage, have surged.
According to the English-language Hurriyet Daily News, it’s the first time Turkey’s government telecommunications agency, the TIB, blocked a site without a court order.
Google, which owns YouTube, had reportedly recently refused Turkey’s requests to remove a video that includes a man who sounds like Erdo?an telling another man, possibly his son, to hide money from investigators.
Earlier on Thursday, at a high-level government meeting, reportedly discussing military intervention in Syria hit YouTube, the Turkish Foreign Ministry decried the leak as the work of a “network of treason.”
It’s still possible to access sites within Turkey through the a mirror for the free Tor browser, a service Turks have rapidly adopted.
Illustration by Jason Reed
