Stefan Mileschin

YouTube is online in Turkey again and may be allowed to show whistleblowing videos which embarrass the government.

Turkey's top court declared a government ban on YouTube unconstitutional, and cited the Turkish constitution's freedom of expression clause, which guarantees that "everyone has the right to express and disseminate his/her thoughts and opinions by speech, in writing or in pictures or through other media".

The administration of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan went after the site on March 27, after it was used to host a leaked audio recording of Turkish officials discussing security matters in Syria.

Erdogan's ban on Twitter fell flat just two weeks after he imposed it on March 20, and while YouTube is once again accessible, Turkey's Telecommunications Directorate (TIB) has refused to lift web restrictions.

When a lower court told the government to sling its hook, the government just ignored it. It is not clear if the government will ignore the Constitutional Court's appellate decision.

TIB has so far insisted that it had no plans to unblock the site for as long as it contains "criminal content" which is anything that says that Erdogan and his party are involved in anything shady.

It seems that the TIB has blinked, probably because the election is over and if Turks saw anything about government corruption it was clear they did not give a monkey's about it. After all Erdogan was re-elected.

http://news.techeye.net/business/you...gain-in-turkey