Further Turkish social media censorship found with Facebook Mohammad threat

27 Jan 2015

The Turkish government is continuing its censorship of social media after it was found Facebook complied with the government’s latest request to take down a page that disrespected the Islamic prophet, Muhammad.

Based off recent events, it would appear the government has particular sway over even the largest tech companies as last week, Facebook, along with Twitter and Google, were found to have relented and given in to demands to remove pages highlighting investigations into potential political wrong-doings.

Now, according to the BBC, Facebook has also given in to their demands by complying with a takedown of a Facebook page that a Turkish court claimed was insulting to the Islamic prophet Muhammad.

The depiction of Muhammad has been a regular feature in the news this year following on from this month’s attacks on the satirical magazine, Charlie Hebdo, in Paris that led to the deaths of 12 people for their satirical depiction of the Islamic prophet.

According to Facebook’s latest government requests report published in November last year, the Turkish government is one of the most successful in getting data requests accepted by the social network with a total of 1,893 requests for pages to be taken down given the green light between January and June, 2014.

Of the 249 Facebook accounts which the government ask for access to, a majority – 60.78pc – are provided to them by the social network.

Facebook have refused to comment on the situation.

Turkish flag image via Shutterstock

Colm Gorey was a senior journalist with Silicon Republic

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