After receiving a court order, Turkey’s largest telecommunications provider, Turk Telecom, Wednesday blocked access to YouTube because it featured video clips that were seen as insulting to Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, the founder of modern Turkey.

The censorship marks the latest battle between Web titans such as YouTube’s corporate parent, Google Inc., and foreign governments over free speech on the Internet as the companies expand into new international markets.

YouTube and other technologies that allow users to share information “shift power away from central institutions to communities,” Forrester Research analyst Charlene Li said. “Whenever you hold a lot of power, you’re very threatened when that power is taken away from you. That’s what the Internet does, and that is what YouTube is doing.”

An Istanbul court ordered the YouTube ban, acting on a prosecutor’s recommendation. In Turkey, it is a crime punishable by imprisonment to denigrate “Turkishness” or Ataturk, and the statute is sometimes used to prosecute those who criticize official government policy on a wide range of sensitive issues.

In Turkey, freedom of expression is an explosive issue ‚Äî one that has shadowed the government’s push to gain membership in the European Union. Turkish media reported that in recent days, Greek and Turkish nationalists had been posting inflammatory competing videos on YouTube.

The Hurriyet newspaper reported Wednesday that YouTube had received tens of thousands of e-mails protesting the depiction of Ataturk as a homosexual, and that the video clips in question had been removed.

Paul Doany of Turk Telekom said access to the site would be restored if the court ruling was rescinded.

via Los Angeles Times