Blog Blocked in Turkey
Some of you may have noticed that there was a period when we were in Turkey when we were not posting any items. That’s because the blog was blocked. If I tried to access the blog I got a big red sign that said “Access Denied” and then went on to explain that the government had asked servers to block certain sites and so they did. It was a bit shocking as I couldn’t think of anything I had posted that would be offensive, but there you are.
The main thing it precipitated was my thinking quite about our freedoms in the USA including the freedom of speech, which as a journalist is one of the more important ones to me. And also how when we’re in a foreign culture, even one that seems to have so much in common with us, there are very different rules and expectations. It never occurred to me that anything I wrote would be censored and it was a strange feeling. As a journalist I was sometimes involved in stories that the government didn’t want told, but it was unthinkable that we would be cut off.
And then I started to have paranoid fantasies in Turkey, such as would someone knock on the door and confiscate my computer. Had I inadvertently broken some law and be subject to arrest. Of course, none of that happened and we went on our way.
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