Turkish parliament blocks Protestant church websites

Lawmaker calls it ‘embarrassing, humiliating and defaming’

Aykan Erdemir, a member of Turkey’s parliament, plans to travel to Diyarbakir Church in mid-June. This week, to prepare for his visit, he looked up the church’s website.

He didn’t get far. His office computer in the parliament blocked the church website with a message that it contained “pornographic” content.

Checking the websites of other Turkish Protestant churches, Erdemir and his colleagues found they also were blocked, though the filtering screens did not mention “pornography” as the reason.

The website for Diyarbakir Church, in southeastern Turkey, is not under a national ban, although on occasion, websites are banned in Turkey — the most notable in recent months being YouTube.

The block affected computers in the parliament only, and it was quickly removed after Erdemir complained.

“The lifting of the block on the Diyarbakir Church website was a small step for internet freedoms in Turkey, but a big step for internet freedom in the Parliament,” he said.

Erdemir, representing the western province of Bursa in the main opposition Republican People’s Party, said the episode is a symptom of deep-rooted governmental antagonism toward Christians, especially Protestants, and of Turkey’s increasing intolerance towards minorities.

“Humiliating, embarrassing and defaming” is how he described the block on the website. Keep reading

See also
Muslims pray to turn Turkey's greatest monument back into a mosque