Skip to main content

The latest victim of Turkey’s campaign of censorship is Tor

turkey blocks tor dark web keyboard key
skdesign / 123RF Stock Photo
Muting voices is no new practice for the Turkish government. The country has led the world for several years when it comes to jailing journalists, and just last week, it was revealed that a record number of journalists around the world are now behind bars, with burgeoning numbers attributed largely to Turkey’s crackdown on freedom of the press following the failed coup earlier this year. And now, Turkey is exercising yet another form of control over individual voices — this time, on the web.

Over the weekend, watchdog group Turkey Blocks pointed out that the Tor anonymity network has been blocked, marking the defeat of the “last line of defense against the world’s most severe internet censorship regimes.” As Turkey Blocks wrote, “Our study indicates that service providers have successfully complied with a government order to ban VPN services.” And while Tor has grown in popularity in recent times (particularly in response to the Turkish government’s tightening grip on other aspects of the web), its moment in the sun seems to be over.

So what does this mean? According to Turkey Blocks, these “sophisticated blocking measures” will prevent internet users from easily circumventing social media shutdowns and other mass-censorship tactics in Turkey. Indeed, the watchdog group says, the blocking of Tor (along with the government’s previous banning of VPN services), could make Turkey’s digital landscape look increasingly like that of China’s, whose Great Firewall has been widely criticized as overly restrictive.

While other cases of Turkish censorship have generally followed contentious events (like the attempted coup), this one seems to have emerged almost as a precautionary measure from Turkish President Recep Erdogan. Already, Facebook, Twitter, WhatsApp, and YouTube have been blocked, and access to sharing services like Google Drive, Dropbox, OneDrive, and GitHub has been restricted.

Turkey Blocks concluded, “Network restrictions imposed by the government will become absolute for many internet users, even those who were previously able to work around frequent mass-censorship events with relative ease. The new measures are thus likely to change the nature of internet usage over years to come, diminishing media freedom and freedom of opinion and expression in Turkey.”

Editors' Recommendations

Lulu Chang
Former Digital Trends Contributor
Fascinated by the effects of technology on human interaction, Lulu believes that if her parents can use your new app…
AMD’s latest V-Cache chip proves to be cheap, fast, and perfect for gaming
AMD Ryzen 5 5600X3D box.

AMD's surprise launch of the Ryzen 5 5600X3D is upon us -- the CPUs are hitting the shelves starting tomorrow. However, it's a very exclusive set of shelves, seeing as the CPU will only be available at Micro Center for a limited amount of time.

Based on AMD's aging AM4 platform, is this CPU a worthy contender at a time when there are newer Ryzen 7000 parts readily available? The first reviews are in, and we pretty much know the answer.
Specs and architecture

Read more
Why the latest ThinkPad X1 Yoga Gen 8 isn’t worth the upgrade
Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Yoga Gen 7 front angled view showing display.

The ThinkPad X1 Yoga is Lenovo's business-oriented 360-degree 2-in-1 laptop. I underwent a significant upgrade in its 6th generation, with the ThinkPad X1 Yoga Gen 7 model upgrading the components for faster speeds and better battery life. Now, Lenovo has released the 8th generation, and again it switches up the internals and leaves the external chassis alone.

But the changes in CPUs weren't simply an upgrade to the 13th-gen versions of the previous model's processors. Instead, Lenovo switched to 13th-gen low-power CPUs in most configurations. Was this an upgrade or a downgrade for this well-built business machine?
Specs and configurations
 

Read more
Check out the latest version of Tesla Bot in video update
Tesla's Tesla Bot.

Tesla has just released a video featuring the latest version of the Tesla Bot, the company’s humanoid robot that could one day be deployed alongside its factory workers -- or possibly replace them altogether.

Tesla Bot Update

Read more