The alleged reason behind Turkey’s top telecommunications watchdog’s decision to block access to popular website Ekşi Sözlük has been revealed after a week of uncertainty.
The Information Technologies and Communications Authority (BTK) blocked access to user-contribution-based collaborative hypertext dictionary without explaining its reasons on Tuesday.
Many suspected that the platform might have been targeted in relation to the government’s efforts to fight what it calls disinformation being spread on social media following the 6 February twin earthquakes that hit 10 provinces in Turkey’s south, leaving more than 45,000 dead, according to latest official figures.
“We do not have information about the details [of the blocking], we are trying to get information from the authorities,” the executives of the platform said after the decision.
The platform announced on its Twitter account on 22 February that they could not get any information from the authorities despite several requests to meet with BTK officials.
The next day the platform announced that it had received a court order stating that access to Ekşi Sözlük has been blocked for spreading fake information on the Turkish military and the state following the disaster that portrayed state institutions as incompetent and aimed creating chaos in the society. The court order did not include the specific post or posts that led the BTK to call for access to the dictionary to be blocked.
The decision and the later attitude of the BTK seem to have surprised the officials of the Ekşi Sözlük, probably as they have for years complied with numerous demands of the BTK, obediently removing posts on the platform and sharing information on users, in order to avoid being a target of the Turkish government’s attempts to repress any kind of dissent expressed on social media.
After days of uncertainty, Veryansın TV, a left-nationalist media outlet, claimed that the post behind the BTK’s decision to censor the whole platform has been revealed.
It is a long post written by a Turkish squadron commander who experienced the earthquake on 6 February in Antakya in the southern province of Hatay, where he is assigned.
“Allah showed me hell in this world that night, that is the simplest and the most brief sentence I can write on this incident,” he said.
The military officer said that he had experienced earthquakes before in 1999, 2011 and 2020 in different parts of Turkey, but the 7.8 magnitude tremor had been nothing like these.
“The earthquake continued like a lifetime, it did not seem to end,” he said, adding that this was to first time he had been unable to stay calm during a strong seismic activity, despite being in a container rather than a high-rise block of flats.
The squadron commander wrote that higher-ranking military officers gathered immediately to evaluate the damage in the military facilities, and early in the morning their brigade commander ordered a team of 40 soldiers including him, to go to town to look for three specialist sergeants who had been at their homes during the tremor.
“My god, is that an American disaster movie? Am I watching one of the movies showing an apocalyptic end of the world? The rain, the traffic, dead people, accidents, collapsed buildings and chaos. It is impossible not to go crazy,” he wrote, describing the situation on his way to town.
Their journey took hours, and a second earthquake of a magnitude 7.6 rocked the province once more just as they reached the city centre.
People ran up to him, crying, “Brother soldier, where is the state?” straight after the second tremor, the military officer said.
According to his account, he then ran to collapsed buildings to rescue people under the rubble. A mother waiting in front of a building for help to save her two children, an 80-year old woman who in shock had forgotten who she was living with, a five-year old child he found dead under a collapsed block of flats, people shouting to them to save their families rather than others in worse positions, are among stories the officer shared with Ekşi Sözlük readers.
The officer goes on narrating his experience up to the eighth day of the disaster, repeatedly stressing that Turkey’s Disaster and Emergency Management Presidency (AFAD) was nowhere to be found, apart from a few of its volunteers who were trying to help people without proper equipment.
“Today is the eighth day. I have still not seen a single AFAD employee. Volunteers from AFAD are here, either gathered round a fire or sleeping on their duvets laid on the asphalt road. I still see people and soldiers sleeping on the street,” the military officer said.
“No information, no equipment has been given to the AFAD volunteers, they have no leader and no sort of coordination,” he added.
“I am telling the ongoing situation here blatantly. Nobody came to Hatay in the first two days. The armed forces waited for orders above in its “rapid decision making” system, yes. There is still no AFAD. The Red Crescent just brought 25 tents,” the squadron commander went on.
The military officer’s whole story in Turkish still can be reached outside Turkey. The future of the Ekşi Sözlük is uncertain. Whether the Turkish authorities have identified the military officer from the information found in his post and punished him in some way remains unknown.
