The Turkish government has extended its widespread and systematic censorship to the official website of Turkey’s main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP).
According to a report by the Cumhuriyet daily on Monday, an İstanbul court has ordered the blocking of a story about Turkish Prime Minister Binali Yıldırım’s business dealings on 22 websites, one of which was the CHP’s official website.
CHP deputy Barış Yarkadaş said: “Censorship has extended from newspaper pages to our party’s website. This is an international disgrace. It has been shown once again that they [the government] are intolerant of the truth.”
He added that the court’s ruling was illegal and that the judge responsible had not even examined the details of the case before making his decision. Yarkadaş also said that censorship had reached “intolerable dimensions.”
“The government cannot bear hearing the truth and are trying to prevent us from telling the people how their actions have impoverished them. Censorship is a sign of weakness in a government that looks strong. Truth will win, not censorship,” he said.
Censorship has increased in Turkey in recent years. The popular website Wikipedia has been blocked for almost a year. The country also ranks low in measures of press freedom and is the world’s leading jailer of journalists. (SCF with ahvalnews.com)
