Turkey accused of throttling social media sites

Turkey seems to be having a knee-jerk reaction to the horrific bombing at Istanbul’s main airport last week. The Turkish government has allegedly restricted access to Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube, to tackle the menace of radicalization, and to exercise more control over online content.

Turkey, however, denied that it blocked the Internet, blaming outages last week and earlier this year on spikes in usage after major events. But technical experts at watchdog groups say the blackouts on social media are intentional, aimed in part at stopping the spread of militant images and propaganda.

Facebook and Twitter also said that the problem wasn’t on their end. The Turkish government is accused of at least throttling—slowing down certain websites to the point where they are unusable—if not blocking.

Turkey has shut down access entirely to certain sites, or throttled it, on seven occasions over the past year, according to Turkey Blocks, a group that monitors censorship in Turkey.

Countries such as China and Iran have long kept tight control over online media, and now human rights and Internet activists are battling this sense of insecurity towards the internet with many more democratic governments.

“It’s becoming the go-to mechanism for governments trying to control the flow of information,” said Peter Micek, global policy and legal counsel for Access Now, a group that campaigns for digital rights and monitors shutdowns. “It is still the Wild West in terms of what acceptable behavior is and what violates human rights online.”

This disturbing trend prompted the United Nations Human Rights Council last week to renew the “Internet resolution,” which effectively defines Internet shutdowns as a violation of human rights. The resolution, which has been adopted by the more than 40 member states since its introduction in 2012, is not legally binding but is meant to set standards for state behavior.