Oh Turkey...

When you're not denying one of the worst genocides in modern history, you're tilting towards fascism...

MY you're lucky we need your airspace (now more than ever with Russia's actions.)

I know, it's quite depressing. I have a close Turkish friend.

Turkey will now disappear in black void, where food rots, water is fouled and people crawl around in darkness. The loss of twitter proves this, nothing can happen or occur without social media.

My Turkish friends are really upset at what has been going on over there the past year.

kaner406: There are no 'Twitter spies' which the Turkish government should be worrying about. It is the insanity that the government expects people to buy that is to me most disturbing, not the 'black void' itself.

China has been censoring the internet for years, have they fallen from the edge of the planet?

I share your concern regarding the reason, but seriously this can hardly be seen as a massive game changer in what is actually going on.

/happy to be disproved otherwise.

kaner406: No, what is most depressing is that the game looks just about over.

It is a pattern repeated in all the recent uprisings. At some point, usually after protestshave been going on for a while, that the government tries to control the situation by trying to inhibit communication. See Egypt, Syria, Lebanon, Thailand, most recently Ukraine and so on. Basically that is in no way a new strategy, but provoces harder responses in recent events, because that what is taken away has a much higher value to the protesters as some landline phones had 20 years ago. But what can a desperate regime do? The amount of data bypassing its controls via the internet is staggering and can't be accepted. Also you need to keep the opposition from organizing. If this trend continues, turkey is in for quite a ride. I can only guess what impact that would have on Germany with our big Turkish community. I mean we are already exporting jihad fighters.

Also, kaner, China never tried to get into the EU and promised to obey our human right codex. Turkey did that and more. If they had wanted some kind of religious dictatorship, they shouldn't have mixed with us. Now they have a partially westernized population wanting it all, while they are trying to turn back the clock. Good luck to them, I hope we don't see to many people die.

Maybe someone knows the Radiotheory by Berthold Brecht? Admittedly, it is quite old being formulated around 1930, but it still was one of the first mass media theories and postulated some interesting things. Hans Magnus Enzensberger worked it over in the late 60's i think, incorporating television. I always felt that these two guys were talking about the internet in what they desired off of a medium, not about the limited mediums they had to deal with.
The Internet is the first medium that offers real two way communications in combination with an unlimited amout of recipients. The very concept of that is anathema to every system that depends on an information flow from top to bottom. Only recently mobile phones and other hard- and software developments have made it really usable for a mass of people and oh wonder... they act pretty much the way Brecht and Enzensberger guessed they would over half a century ago.
We will be seeing a lot more of this during the next one or two decades. I am willing to bet pretty much any amount of money on that.

@kaner ... taking away one of the most commonly accepted forms of communications is the first step toward taking away all communications. They're trying to block their people off with the outside world, and that's a horrible thing to do to someone.

@Party ... I imagine the Turks will have some things to say, hoping for some kind of intervention, but you and I both know how little influence they actually hold over how things work in the cities. I doubt much will change, though maybe more will leave Turkey for the various jobs they're offered in Germany.