On Thursday, the Turkish government banned it access of the whole country from YouTube, the Twitter, in an effort to suppress anti-government "voices" ahead of the March 30 local elections. The Turkish Prime Minister Recep Recep Tayyip Erdogan said that Social Media facilitate the spread of wiretapped recordings and this is politically damaging.
Η Turkey however, it is not the first country that, in order to suppress social unrest, banned access to social networks. There are at least six other countries that currently block it Facebook, the YouTube, and Twitter, and many others have implemented a temporary block over the past two years.
Who are they;
China: China has blocked Facebook, Twitter and YouTube 2009. The Social Media block was made when a peaceful protest against the Uighurs, the Muslim minority of China, resulted in deadly riots in Xinjiang. In September of 2013, the government decided to stop censoring foreign websites in Shanghai's free trade zone, a 17 square mile in mainland China, but Social Media is still blocked nationwide.
Iran: Iran has blocked Facebook, Twitter and YouTube from 2009 following the disputed Iranian presidential election.
Vietnam: Over the past two years, there have been extensive reports of Facebook exclusion in Vietnam. It did not happen as many citizens of the country used the social network. However, in September of 2013, Vietnam passed a law banning its citizens from publishing anti-government content on the social network. Facebook did not comment.
Pakistan: In September 2012, Pakistan blocked YouTube after the site refused to remove an anti-Islamic video which caused protests in the country. The ban continues to this day.
North Korea: Internet access is extremely limited in North Korea.
Eritrea: According to Reporters Without Borders, in 2011, two of the country's largest Internet service providers blocked YouTube. The US Freedom House, which conducts civil liberties investigations, said in a 2013 report that the website had been shut down: "The government requires all ISPs to use a state-controlled Internet infrastructure." Eritrea is commonly referred to as one of the most censored countries in the world.
Note that Twitter, which was used as a tool for organizing demonstrations during the Arab Spring, was partially or completely banned by many governments from 2011. Among them are Algeria, Tunisia, Egypt, Cameroon, and Malawi, according to OpenNet. Belarus also blocked major social networks, such as Twitter, 2011 to suppress anti-government demonstrations. That same year, when unrest in the United Kingdom broke out, Prime Minister David Cameron threatened to ban social networking, such as Twitter and Facebook, though it did not.
The data is from Motherjones
