'This is censorship': Ekşi Sözlük CEO slams access ban, vows to take legal action

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Ekşi Sözlük to take legal action against the access ban imposed on February 21, the CEO of the platform told bianet.

The Information Technologies and Communications Authority (BTK) had blocked access to the website upon a decision from the Ankara 4th Penal Judgeship of Peace.

"What has been done is, in a word, censorship," said Başak Purut, noting that access to the entire website was banned for an indefinite period, which he said was against the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR).

"Because the decision was about Ekşi Sözlük, citizens can still read the same content in other environments. For this reason, the chaos after the earthquake is still discussed on social media. Naturally, there can still be inaccurate and incorrect information sharing."

"We'll exercise our legal rights"

"Also, since a lot of time has passed since the earthquake and healthy communication has been established with the [quake-hit] region, there is almost no possibility of misinformation as claimed," said Purut.

"It is strange that the only website that was blocked is Ekşi Sözlük, which is based in Türkiye, and in contact with [official] institutions," he said, noting that even the court order admits that Ekşi Sözlük implements court orders regarding its content.

"We expect this mistake to be rectified without delay. We will exercise all our legal rights and will continue to inform the public about our steps and solutions. In this process, our users continue to access our site using VPN and similar solutions."

What happened?

Access to Ekşi Sözlük, which is frequently implicated by the pro-government media due to its users' posts against the government, was blocked on February 21.

Which posts the ban is based on are still not clear.

Fatih Altaylı, a prominent journalist, claimed in an article published yesterday on the Habertürk news portal that the platform had previously agreed to approve the membership of pro-government trolls in order to overcome the problems it had with the government.

Purut dismissed the claims on Twitter, calling on the journalist to specify his claims.

Founded in 1999, Ekşi Sözlük, "Sour Dictionary" for Turkish, is one of the most popular websites in Türkiye. Only approved users are allowed to post messages on the site, the number of which is over 100,000.

The authorities in Türkiye had also restricted access to Twitter for nearly an entire day after the earthquakes that claimed over 44,000 lives in Türkiye's south and southeast.

Over 130 people were detained across Türkiye because of their posts about the massive earthquakes on February 6, according to a statement from the police on February 23.

Over the past decade, the government frequently resorted to social media restrictions at times of crisis, such as bomb attacks or natural disasters. The latest example was the November 13 İstanbul bomb attack, after which all major social media platforms were restricted and dozens of social media users were investigated over their posts. (TY/VK)