Hi Erdal,
This news surprises me very much.
With the ultimate prize of EU membership, I had thought Turkey was really committed to reform and expanding minority rights a little, but apparently not.
I think it's very nasty that Turkey can still expect to be admitted to the EU when it is still doing things like arresting somebody just for editing the Kurdish section of DMOZ (I don't know the incident, but most likely the charges against them are "seperatism").
I think you should bring this horrendous behaviour on the part of the Turkish government to the attention of Amnesty International. This person was sentenced to 10 months just for writing DMOZ content in their own language? Turkey doesn't have a very good human rights level, but I really thought things were changing.
As for the Kurdish Wikipedia being blocked, can you think of any possible reasons other than the simple fact that it is in Kurdish?
If it is being blocked in individual netcafes, one possible strategy is to try to mobilise Wikipedians of all nationalities in a letter- (or e-mail-) writing campaign to request that these companies lift their illogical block of a totally educational and appropriate site.
I don't know whether or not there has really been a significant drop, but if ku.wikipedia is being blocked for the single reason that it is in Kurdish (with probably some stupid charge to cover it up like "we don't know what it says, it could be erotica" or "it incites political violence"), regardless of how it effects the numbers, we really should try to do something.
Xêrxuazî Mark
On Sat, 11 Dec 2004 02:00:26 +0100, Erdal Ronahi erdal.ronahi@gmx.net wrote:
Hi there,
I get reports from Turkey that Internet Cafes have begun to block several Kurdish sites including the Kurdish Wikipedia, which I am admin on. While it is known that political sites hosted in Europe are being censored in the whole of Turkey, the selective blocking of sites like Wikipedia using special software seems to be something new.
After the sentencing of a dmoz editor to 10 months in prison two weeks ago this looks like another escalation.
Before all, I want to be sure that there is a significant fall in the access rate from Turkey. Unfortunately the Webalizer statistics do not work at the moment. Can anybody with a better insight verify if there is a notable fall in accesses from Turkey to the Kurdish Wikipedia?
Thanks, Erdal
Wikipedia-l mailing list Wikipedia-l@Wikimedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l