International, Media, Politics, Society

Turkish Government Strengthens Its Effort To Ban Twitter

Submitted by Darren Smith, Weekend Contributor

Turkish Prime Minister
Recep Erdoğan

The continuing cat and mouse game between the government of Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and Turkish users of the social networking site Twitter shows the desire for control of information and the historical drive to circumvent it.

 After pledging to “wipe out Twitter,” Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan ordered Turkish ISPs to block the social networking site, redirecting requests to a government webpage. But that move, which used a change in the Domain Name Service hosted by network providers in Turkey, was quickly circumvented by Twitter users through the use of alternative DNS servers. DNS servers basically match domain names such as example.com with their core Internet Protocol Addresses for which websites are addressed under the surface to most users. By controlling the DNS servers in Turkey by forced banning of the twitter.com name, Turkish DNS servers redirect traffic to an IP address of a government website rather than the official twitter.com website.The social media campaign against Erdoğan has continued to grow despite the government’s best effort, and even more Turks are flocking to Twitter as a result of the federal censorship. Immediately following the ban, Twitter usage in Turkey rose 138 percent.

But now the government has raised the bar of the attack, ordering Turkish Internet Service Providers (ISPs) to block traffic to the Internet Protocol (IP) addresses assigned to Twitter. This move essentially erases Twitter from the Internet within Turkey—at least to those people who don’t have access to SMS messaging, a foreign virtual private network or Web proxy service, or the Tor anonymizing network.

Flag of Turkey“We can confirm that Turkey is now blocking the IP addresses of Twitter after the previous DNS blocking technique proved ineffective,” said Doug Madory, of the Internet monitoring company Renesys, in an e-mail to Ars. A Turkish government webpage shows that there is an IP address block order in effect for 199.16.156.6, the primary IP address for twitter.com.

Internet MessengerWhat this means is that despite the Turkish Government banning the core IP address to residents of Turkey, who are being subjected to restrictions on the internet network in Turkey, twitter users are using methods to tunnel through to outside servers that connect with Twitter. This forces the Turkish Government to then attempt to ban all connections to virtual server IP addresses outside Turkey, which is impossible.

The effort by Prime Minister Erdoğan certainly is not having the effect he had hoped for.

By Darren Smith

Sources:

Ars Technica

Turkish Telecommunications Department IP address inquiry page (In Turkish)

Photo Credit, Internet Messenger: Dr. Avishai Teicher

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11 thoughts on “Turkish Government Strengthens Its Effort To Ban Twitter”

  1. Put Turkey firmly into the class of Pirate Territories. Do no business with them. Do not sail a boat near their shore, do not go on land in their Territory, fly over if you must but flush.
    We formerly called territories First World, Second World, Third World. That is out of date. There are many uncivilized territories which purport to be civilized nation states. They send some schmuck to the UN who went to a school in England but wears the turban etc. As to these Turks we need to say, ok, ban the internet and we will ban you. For starters we don’t need any turks coming into our borders.

  2. It’s useless any ways…….Communicate in 140 characters or less…

  5. “The continuing cat and mouse game between the government of Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and Turkish users of the social networking site Twitter shows the desire for control of information and the historical drive to circumvent it.” – Darren

    Aha! The Ways of Bernays:

    Today, few people outside the public relations profession recognize the name of Edward L. Bernays. As the year 2000 approaches, however, his name deserves to figure on historians’ lists of the most influential figures of the 20th century.

    It is impossible to fundamentally grasp the social, political, economic and cultural developments of the past 100 years without some understanding of Bernays and his professional heirs in the public relations industry.
    …
    THE conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country. We are governed, our minds are molded, our tastes formed, our ideas suggested, largely by men we have never heard of. This is a logical result of the way in which our democratic society is organized. Vast numbers of human beings must cooperate in this manner if they are to live together as a smoothly functioning society.

    (Epigovernment: The New Model – 4). Turkey is in NATO and the military NSA is in NATO.

    It figures.

  6. More reason than ever to stamp out all forms of censorship at every level here at home, before it gets out of hand, including all the whinig commenters who want to muzzel someone when they can’t win an argument.

  7. The EEKG site has the English version: (The PROTECTION MEASURE has been taken for this website (199.16.156.6) according to Decision Nr. 2014/18 dated 03/02/2014 of İstanbul Anadolu 14. Asliye Ceza Mahkemesi has been implemented by Telekomünikasyon İletişim Başkanlığı.)

  8. Here is the Google Translate version of the Turkish EEKG explanation of the block of 199.16.156.6: This Internet site (199.16.156.6) on 5th Istanbul Anatolia Magistrates’ Court dated 18.03.2014 and 2014/181 dated according to the decision by the Telecommunications Communication Presidency protection measures are implemented.

  11. The use of social media was initially used in Thailand as a democratic force but was soon manipulated globally into suspiciously spontaneous financed false fronts. After the domino theory being proven, afterall, to be ironically true with the advent of the Arab Springs and color revolts a la carte, it is not surprising that (like China) nervous governments are attempting to intercept and suppress outside interventions. Perhaps Turkey’s strategic geopolitical positioning has it targeted ? IS it next?

    This is a paper written in 2010 by academics (Volodymyr V. Lysenko and Kevin C. Desouza) at the Information School, University of Washington, Seattle.

    It takes up the question of the earlier Orange Revolution and use of the internet (at that time) to influence the Ukrainian movement. It also suggests that social media could influence transitions, but the inference that social media can be manipulated as a significant force. It is a well done study and worth a serious evaluation. Considering the evidence for outside intervention in all of these ‘spring uprisings’ and ‘color revolutions’ that go back to the 1950s, perhaps some open scrutiny is long overdue?

    Here is the link to the blueprint study: Electoral (“color”) revolutions, info-flow & Internet–based communication technologies (ICTs). The implication is that it can be used or abused for purposes that appear to be quixotic and political
    opportunism, and perhaps favored by the best financed interests.

    http://firstmonday.org/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/2992/2599
    ROLE OF INTERNET-BASED INFORMATION FLOWS AND TECHNOLOGIES IN ELECTORIAL REVOLUTIONS: THE CASE OF UKRAINE’S ORANGE REVOLUTION. (2000-2004)

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