In the past year, Eksi Sözlük, Antoloji.com, Wordpress, Indymedia İstanbul, Youtube, the newspaper of Gündem, Google Groups, Geocities and many other internet sites have been banned by the courts.

Global video sharing site youtube.com has been closed for three months now. Video sharing sites dailymotion and kliptube.com have been barred very recently.

Those internet site and blog owners who are against this censorship have decided to ban their own sites voluntarily.

One of these sites, http://anafikir.com/sansur/ (the main theme.com/censorship/) appeared with a text on a black background with a statement saying “This is a preview of the future of the internet! Everyday another site is being banned. We are curious what kind of internet we will have, if the internet banning goes at this rate. This is the simulation of the future.”

This particular site is also giving technical assistance to those sites who want to be part of this movement that will last until August 20.

“The access to this site is denied by its own decision”

As a reaction to the statement “The access to this site is denied by a court order” that we have gotten used to seeing lately, the internet site elmaaltshift.com is responding with the statement “The access to this site is denied by its own decision” in this campaign. The site http://www.sinema.com/ has done the same.

http://www.zargan.com/, known by the internet users as the English-Turkish dictionary, is supporting the campaign, too.

Zargan has put the following message on its site: “We think the internet banning decisions by  the Telecommunication Presidency and the Turkish courts in the recent days have been at least partially arbitrary and excessive. In order to call attention to the danger the freedom of communication is facing, we will prevent the access to Zargan voluntarily until the midnight of August 20.”

Commenting about the campaign, art director of Elmaaltshift.com, the site that started the campaign, Fırat Yıldız and his partner Deniz Tan told Ntvmsnbc.com that they stopped the access to their site as a reaction to the banning of the sites Youtube.com and dailymotion.com. (EÖ/EZÖ/TB)