Turkey banned popular online forum Reddit on the evening of Nov. 13. That did not last long though, as the forum became accessible again just a day later.
The blocking of Reddit was confirmed by the Telecom Authority of Turkey, or the TIB, under the Internet censorship law of the country.
"After technical analysis and legal consideration based on the Law Nr. 5651, ADMINISTRATION MEASURE has been taken for this website (reddit.com) according to Decision Nr. 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.
Law 5651 allows Turkey to block websites for different possible reasons, including terrorism threats, piracy and pornography. The unpopular law was enacted back in 2007, and it gave the TIB the power to block websites and other content without the need to receive any authorization from other offices in the government or from its courts.
The Turkish government expanded on its Internet censorship laws last year, forcing residents of Ankara and Istanbul to protest in the streets. The protests were met with police officers in riot gear, armed with tear gas and rubber bullets.
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.
A user confirmed that Turkey blocked Reddit at the DNS level, which meant that users that wanted to access Reddit can circumvent the block by pointing their devices and computers to another DNS server not located in Turkey, such as the DNS Servers of Google at 8.8.8.8 and 8.8.4.4.
Law 5651 has earlier banned social media websites such as Twitter, Facebook and YouTube, with these bans also being overturned similar to the one on Reddit. Imgur, the image-sharing service, however, is still banned.
Human Rights Watch criticized the Internet censorship law of Turkey, stating that the country has an abysmal record in protecting the free expression of its citizens online. According to the group, the government has already blocked off tens of thousands of websites under the controversial law.
