In Turkey, the government uses a controversial censorship law to shut down websites and services across the nation.
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Turkey’s Internet Law 5651 was first put into effect in 2007, meaning there’s been plenty of time to discover that Reddit is home to just as much non-family-friendly content as it is to free speech. The law allows the government to ban websites found hosting “scandalous” content, including piracy, drugs, adult material, or criticism of Mustafa Ataturk, the nation’s first president.
When users try to go to bitly website, they get redirected to a page starting in Turkish “this internet site (bit.ly) is placed under administrative measures by the Telecommunication Authority”. Earlier, the government officials of Turkey have banned YouTube for a brief period in April this year.
However, such ban can be overruled by changing the DNS settings.
Turkey banned Reddit on the evening of November 13, but the block was lifted the following day. “490.05.01.2015.-252804 dated 13/11/2015 of the Presidency of Telecommunication and Communication”, said the TIB in the statement regarding Reddit’s block.
The Turkish government has faced protests and criticism for its crackdown on the Internet freedom.
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After the initial block on Reddit, users from Turkey took to the forum to share strategies on how to circumvent the censorship using methods such as virtual private networks or logging on to the Internet using Tor. There is no explicit reason given by the officials other than stating that the website was banned to comply with the Internet censorship law 5651.
