It seems as if today is the day of the repeat story: a court in Turkey has banned access to YouTube after a single citizen complained that it contained clips which insulted the country. The ruling was based on allegations that material posted on the video sharing website mocked the country's modern founder, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, along with the national army, president Abdullah Gul and prime minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Consequently, the Turkish Telecommunications Board has been told to block all access to YouTube. Previously, Turkey had blocked access to YouTube in March this year after it hosted a video showing pictures of Ataturk with insults superimposed in English. The country's penal code makes it a crime to insult 'Turkishness' and the courts routinely press charges against writers and journalists for mentioning the Armenian genocide of 1915-1917. Thus, this ruling comes as no great surprise.
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