Facebook Ordered To Censor Pages Or Face Ban In Turkey

Turkey has a long track record of trying to censor social media over political and religious reasons. Earlier this month, Twitter received the nation's focus when it demanded that an account belonging to an opposition newspaper be censored, otherwise the site would be banned. Now the nation has turned its attention to Facebook with similar threats and demands, this time with a requirement that the social network block certain pages considered to be offensive, otherwise the site will also be blocked.

The demands were made public by Turkey's state broadcaster TRT, which has reported that a Turkish court has ruled Facebook needs to censor access to some pages considered to be insulting to the prophet Mohammad or face censorship itself. The ruling was made on Sunday.

Following this, the social network has reportedly blocked a single page as of yesterday in response to the court order. That information comes from an unnamed source that spoke to Reuters. Whether this will satisfy the Turkish government or will be joined by other pages is yet to be seen.

Twitter has previously been banned in the nation, something that was followed last year by YouTube — the reasons for which were never made entirely clear, though it was believed to be over a leaked recording of a top secret political discussion. The blocks were reversed a short while later following a court ruling.

SOURCE: Reuters