Turkish Court Orders Facebook To Block Pages Insulting Muhammad

A Turkish court has ordered Facebook to block a number of pages deemed insulting to the Prophet Muhammad, threatening to completely block access to the social networking site if it does not comply.

The order made by the Gölbaşı Criminal Court of Peace on Sunday followed the request of a prosecutor. No one from Facebook was immediately available for comment.

It was the latest move to crack down on material seen as offensive to religious sensibilities in the largely Muslim nation, where the government of President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan is considered to be pursuing an Islamist-leaning agenda.

A Diyarbakır court had previously ruled to block web pages featuring a controversial cover of the French satire magazine Charlie Hebdo, which became the target of a fatal attack early in January.

On Jan. 7 gunmen burst into the magazine's weekly editorial meeting, opening fire and killing 12 people in an act of revenge for the magazine having published satirical images of the Prophet in the past.

In its first issue since the attack, Charlie Hebdo published an image on its front page showing a caricature of the Prophet Muhammad. As a result, the Diyarbakır 2nd Criminal Court of Peace blocked access to the web pages of some online news portals for republishing the newest cover.

Earlier this month, police stopped trucks as they left Cumhuriyet's printing center to inspect the paper's content and only allowed distribution of the newspaper to proceed after verifying that the satirical French magazine's controversial cover featuring the Prophet Muhammad was not republished by the daily after it had indicated it would be printing a four-page selection of Charlie Hebdo's post-attack edition.

The İstanbul Chief Public Prosecutor's Office later launched an investigation into the Cumhuriyet daily on charges of defamation and inciting hatred and enmity for including the four-page supplement.

The ruling Justice and Development Party (AK Party) government and pro-government media outlets, including the radical Islamist Yeni Akit, have since kicked off a smear campaign against the Cumhuriyet daily over the same issue.

(Cihan/Today's Zaman)