May 2013 - July 2014: Turkey’s Long Year of Content Restrictions Online
by Nate Schenkkan
Understanding restrictions on the media sphere is an indispensable part of discussing how the Internet is governed in Turkey. As Aslı Tunç notes in the third section of this report, one of the striking features of the Gezi Park protests in June 2013 was how protesters turned to online platforms, especially Twitter, Facebook, and live-streaming services like Ustream, to publicize events that the traditional media ignored. For a brief period, Turkey was an antidote to pessimism about the Internet and political activism after the painful descent of the Arab Spring into counter- revolution and civil war. Although overwhelming police force eventually broke the Gezi protests, new online media outlets continued to flourish in Turkey through 2013 and 2014, seeking to capture the momentum of the summer.
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