Hello!

I am writing to provide an update on the status of the petition that the Wikimedia Foundation filed with the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) in May to lift the more than two-year block of Wikipedia in Turkey.[1]

As you may know, many petitions brought before the ECHR are not granted a hearing by the Court, and, even when the hearing is granted, the process of reaching a resolution can take years. We understood these considerations when we filed the petition, but were hopeful that the Court would recognize the public importance of the case.

The ECHR has acted extremely quickly in this case. On July 2, the Court responded to the petition by giving the case “priority treatment”, and sending official correspondence to us and to Turkish authorities with notification of this designation. The Government of Turkey now has until October 24 to respond by submitting their own observations on the case to the Court. We feel this is a clear indication that the case is being taken seriously.

You can read more information on the Wikimedia Foundation website: https://wikimediafoundation.org/news/2019/07/22/our-legal-case-against-turke...

We invite you to join us in sharing this news within your networks. You can do so on social media by retweeting @Wikipedia and sharing messages of your own. We have also posted a social media toolkit on Meta-Wiki with hashtags, draft messages, and graphics (coming later today) for folks to utilize: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Communications/Unblock_campaigns

We are optimistic about this development and look forward to sharing any future updates with you.

-greg

[1] https://wikimediafoundation.org/news/2019/05/23/wikimedia-foundation-petitio...