Turkey restores access to Google Drive after blocking cloud storage services

ISTANBUL

Turkey’s internet watchdog restored access to Google’s cloud storage service, Google Drive, on Oct. 9 after it was blocked on the grounds of “administrative measures” allegedly due to a series of leaks by the hacking group RedHack.

Turkey blocked access to Google Drive on Oct. 8 as well as two other cloud services, Dropbox and Microsoft’s OneDrive, amid angry reactions from internet users.

The block came days after the reported seizure of emails belonging to Energy Minister Berat Albayrak by RedHack, although there was no official statement on the ban.

As of Oct. 10, access to Dropbox and OneDrive had not yet been restored. In addition to three prominent cloud services, Turkey also blocked access to code hosting service GitHub and the internet archive website Archive.org.

With the ban, Turkish internet users, companies and public institutions could not reach their files stored on cloud services, receiving an SSL error.

Law Professor Yaman Akdeniz said the ban amounted to restrictions for 99 percent of Turkish internet users unable to reach their files on the cloud.

Akdeniz said the ban could be defined as censorship in light of decisions taken by the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) and the Constitutional Court regarding the country’s last Twitter and YouTube bans.

Meanwhile, software developer Ali Işıngör told Hürriyet that the ban on GitHub would not only affect the finance sector or swipe machines but those who apply for EU visa services, noting that thousands of the organization’s software programs had been stored on the platform.

Another software developer, Fatih Kadir Akın, said many public institutions and banking systems in Turkey had been using software published on GitHub.

According to the reports of the independent organization Engelli Web, a total of 114,257 websites were blocked in Turkey as of Oct. 10.