Resistance is futile, dear censors

Strength is irrelevant. Resistance is futile.

The people who seem to be powerful are having a very hard time to really understand what Internet really is and why people don’t obey the rules collectively in the Internet realm whereas the same people are very obedient in the “real” world.

Political power, military power, cash power and people power still means a lot in the world. If you have any one of the four you can bend reality and make others do what you want even if they do not agree with you. Government has the first three and a strong government has the fourth as well. Thus all the governments in the world see it their right to alter every bit of information that they see as unfitting to their worldview, using all the power they have. 

The dictionary meaning of censorship, “the control of free speech and other forms of human expression” and that of censor as an official who “examines books, plays, news reports, motion pictures, radio and television programs, letters, cablegrams, etc., for the purpose of suppressing parts deemed objectionable on moral, political, military, or other grounds” is self-explanatory and universal. Each and every government around the globe has embraced this definition as a tool to construct the society that it dreams of.

However, in some countries governments cannot do as good as they want. Some countries cannot alter everything. Some people are still freer than others in explaining their opinions. This difference is turned into a list and Turkey ranks the 122nd at the Press Freedom Index. I want to take this opportunity to thank the current government as Turkey ranked 101st in 2007. During the last two years we lost 25 places. I don’t think any other country has fallen so sharply. Congo, Djibouti, Zambia, Kenya, Jordan are some of the countries that have more press freedom. All the European Union member countries rank in the first 30.

This is mainly the fault of the legislations and the Supreme Board of Radio and Television, or RTÜK.

Because of the strong sanctions that RTÜK can impose, all media companies have established self-censorship. In the year 2009, in Turkey you cannot see a naked woman in any movie because they are all blurred in fear of a big fine by RTÜK. Recently while watching “South Park,” a friend of mine told me that some scenes were deleted. I did not believe this, but when we found the episode at South Park’s Web site I was horrified to see that at least three scenes were cut. Someone decided that it is better for me not to see a cartoon character masturbating. But decapitation is totally fine. Sex is worse than violence.

As if this is not enough, the head of RTÜK, Davut Dursun, has openly suggested that Internet control should be given to the institution. Mind you that this person was an open propagator of the idea that secularity and Atatürk’s way of governance is bad. Atatürk is bad, secularity is bad, sex is bad.

I really believe that this is in tune with the current government’s aims. After all, Dursun was chosen by the government. Therefore it is safe to say that RTÜK wants the control of Internet as well, so that they will change the content for the society that they envision. It seems that the Act 5651 is not enough for the people who are in power even though thousands of Web sites, including Youtube, are closed down with the rulings based on that law.

I don’t see anything wrong with this. Of course, every government wants to create their own little world. It was our ignorance as we, as a society, let the governments establish bans on freedom of speech on all forms of media. In Europe and the United States, people gave their lives, jobs and everything that they had, while fighting for their own rights. We did not. We have just let our freedoms to be taken away. Now each government can play with what we can see and what we cannot.

However, Internet is a different animal. It has changed the power imbalance in the favor of the individual. Youtube is the eighth in terms of unique users in Turkey even though it is banned. The Turkish people might not be as good in organizing big events like European labor unions do, but they are very good at individual civil disobedience.

RTÜK does not yet know what it is dealing with. My advice to Mr. Dursun is not to fight where he might win a few battles but definitely lose the war. In the Internet age, strength is irrelevant. Resistance is futile.