Adnan Oktar aka Harun Yahya has Dawkins Site banned

From my earlier blog it is now official that Adna Oktar has been responsible for the courts action blocking internet access to richarddawkins.net

“Istanbul’s Sisli 2nd Criminal Court of Peace has banned the site in Turkey on the grounds that Adnan Oktar’s personality was violated by this site. The court reached the decision to ban the site on September 3. A lawsuit is filed for the damages of mental anguish against Richard Dawkins in the amount of 8000 YTL (about 4000 Euro)”.

Irony is that Adnan Oktar is pro EU membership for Turkey. Freedom of speech restrictions and other concerns over human rights are a barrier to that goal. While most EU law emphasises libel, in Turkey the law has a focus on offense. The press officer for Adnan quoted above explained:

“We are not against freedom of speech or expression but you cannot insult people. We found the comments hurtful. It was not a scientific discussion. There was a line and the limit has been passed. We have used all the legal means to stop this site. We asked them to remove the comments but they did not.”

Because if on the site we removed every post that someone else found offensive, then we would not have much of a site for people to discuss science, religion and secularism. I remember being accused of being a communist (which given that I am an Adam Smith fan I found rather amusing). It did not occur to me that laughing it off was not the appropriate option.

Because the mental anguish motive could have been much more profitable. Perhaps enough for a kebab.

In any case, I wonder if the website will be adding countries to the banner of shame? In the meantime thank goodness for proxies!

Quote from New Humanist.