Turkey tries to ban YouTube after Syria leak – will it work?

THE Turkish government has imposed a ban on YouTube a week after it tried to block the social networking site Twitter. But analysts say that the blackout is unlikely to be effective.

The block was ordered after an audio recording of a high-level security meeting was reportedly leaked on the video-sharing site. According to reports in the Turkish media, the ban was imposed by Turkey's telecommunications authority (TİB) as a "precautionary administrative measure".

The leaked recording captured a "highly confidential" conversation between officials related to potential military operations in Syria, the BBC reports.

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up

Critics say the move is another attempt by the Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan's government to suppress online debate ahead of elections at the weekend.

Some users reported that they could not connect to YouTube last night and this morning. A spokesperson from Google, the owner of YouTube, told Reuters that "there is no technical issue on our side and we're looking into the situation".

Turkey previously tried to block YouTube in 2007, The Guardian recalls, but users were still able to reach the site using "virtual private networks" (VPNs) – which allow people to connect to the web anonymously – or by simply changing the domain name settings on their computer.

Judging by the success of the government's attempt to block Twitter, the ban on YouTube is unlikely to work, technology website Motherboard says: "Twitter saw a record number of Turkish visits in the first day of its apparent block, with access easily attained by changing DNS settings, using VPNs, sending tweets by text, or taking to the deep web via browsers like Tor."

Some other Turkish users have circumvented the block simply by using the rival video-sharing site Vimeo, Motherboard adds.