Turkey has blocked as many as 68,000 websites, recently adding the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo to its list. The latest bans come after Turkey’s Telecommunications Directorate appealed to Ankara Gölbaşı Civil Court of Peace, saying the content of 49 new websites violate the country’s blasphemy laws.

The February 27 ruling imposes a blanket ban on some of these websites, including Charlie Hebdo and Turkey’s first atheist organization, while blocking select pages of Inci Sozluk (Pearl Dictionary) and Eksi Sozluk (Sour Dictionary), two very popular forums, as well as pages of the news website T24, which had recently republished the controversial Charlie Hebdo cartoons. The court imposed bans on all 49 websites, arguing they humiliate the religious values of Turkish people.

In its criminal complaint, the Telecommunications Directorate had claimed that insults against religious values could threaten public peace. While it implemented the court’s ruling for most of the targeted websites on March 3, it acted more quickly in banning some others. Article 216 of Turkey’s Penal Code lays down prison sentences for both blasphemy as well as inciting people for hate and enmity.

Onur Romano, spokesperson for Atheism Association, issued a statement on March 3, urging Turkish people to visit ateizmdernegi.org.tr and ateizmdernegi.org, two of its relatively minor domains that are still accessible in the country.

“They haven’t told us what exactly we did wrong according to the law. Please take a look and tell us what we did wrong,” Romano said.

Even though this is the first time that Atheism Association has been targeted, similar websites have already faced such sanctions in the past. Inci Sozluk and Eksi Sozluk, two online dictionaries that allow users to enter non-factual and not-objective entries, witnessed such impositions in 2011 and 2007 respectively. In fact, some pages of Charlie Hebdo’s website were blocked too on January 14, after masked gunmen barged into its Paris headquarters and shot dead 12 employees.

According to Engelli Web, approximately 68,000 websites are blocked in Turkey currently. Reportedly, the Telecommunications Directorate blocked as many as 22,645 websites without seeking a court order in 2014. Ever since Ankara threatened to impose blanket bans on Twitter and Facebook, both social networking sites have been compelled to comply with the orders of Turkish officials to withhold or remove controversial content, with or without a court ruling.

Photo Credits: BGN News