INTERNET CENSORSHIP

The Facebook Turkey team apologized to journalist Bawer Çakır for accidentally suspending access the "Homology" group. Çakır is the holder of the corresponding account and the administrator of the group. This was not the first time that Facebook, one of the largest social networking sites, made such a "mistake".

In a message to Çakır, a Facebook Turkey employee called "Leyla" wrote,

"Hello Bawer,

Access to your account and the Homology group of which you are the administrator was suspended by mistake. We apologize to you for the inconvenience and the accidental closure of your account and the group. If you should have any other problems with Facebook in the future, you can take the appropriate steps required for additional help".

Group critic of Minister Kavaf still closed

At the same time, another group under Çakır's administration that called the Minister for Women and Family Affairs, Selma Aliye Kavaf, to resign is still banned from access.

Çakır underlined that his account was re-opened only after Assoc. Prof. Yaman Akdeniz had talked to an administrator of the Facebook Turkey team. Akdeniz is an expert on internet law and specialized on access bans and freedom of expression.

Before that, his e-mail sent to the Facebook Turkey team remained unanswered, Çakır stated. "I think it is quite funny that on Facebook things work when you have connections".

"Facebook Turkey is not a transparent establishment and this is problematic in my opinion. Moreover, I do not understand the issue of 'closing down a group by mistake'. I wonder why such a mistake does not happen to the administrators of sites or groups that contain hate speech. Additionally, I think that the team's intervention against discrimination remained 'insufficient', to be polite".

Not the first mistake of Facebook

Some time ago, the Facebook Turkey team suspended access to the Eskişehir Purple Hand LGBTT (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transvestite and Transsexual) Organization and the personal accounts of its administrators saying that it was "in breach with ethic rules".

Purple Hand defined this as a discriminatory application and contacted the site's head office in the U.S. via an international LGBT organization. Thereupon, most of the accounts were re-opened and the group became accessible again.

Facebook informed Purple Hand that "this occurred because of a technical problem during the translation of the ethic rules into Turkish". (BB/EÖ/VK)