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WATCH: Turkey's Civil Revolt – Istanbul Rising
By the time news of a political scandal broke in late 2013, key players in the government and a "gas for gold" scheme, citizens were furious. President Erdogan's reaction was to pass one more law giving broader power to the Information and Communication Technologies Authority (BTK or Bilgi İletişim ve Teknolojileri Kurumu). The law allowed internet service providers to collect user data without a mandatory judicial decision to do so. Social networks and other sites such as Vimeo were banned when users uploaded videos seen to promote anti-government gatherings.As Turks online have said, they live in a country that is uses internet blackouts as a response to political events. The access to specific websites was blocked at least seven times last year, according to Turkey Blocks, an activist group that maps censorship in Turkey.Even this year, after the attack at the Istanbul's airport, the Turkish government implemented the law on national security to block the sharing of specific material, affecting social media as well as the media. In fact, trying to access Twitter, Facebook and YouTube after any major political development is likely to end like this:
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