Mind boggling

Apparently Turkish creationist Adnan Oktar, aka Harun Yahya, has managed to get a Trukish court to shut down access to all WordPress blogs because of “unlawful statements regarding…Adnan Oktar”.

Official WordPress blog

Matt’s blog

Ed Darrell’s blog, and some older background notes
PZ Myers

The offending blogs:

http://adnanoktar.wordpress.com
http://adnanoktarveislam.wordpress.com/
http://fitikado.wordpress.com

http://oktarbabuna.wordpress.com
http://adnancilar.wordpress.com/
http://adnanoktarveislam.wordpress.com/
http://whoisharunyahya.wordpress.com/
http://adnanoktargercekleri.wordpress.com/
http://quiestharunyahya.wordpress.com/
http://harunyahyaarabic.wordpress.com/
http://safsataciharunyahya.wordpress.com/
http://savsatalaracevap.wordpress.com/

And, most interestingly, the demands of Yahya’s lawyers:

WE DEMAND YOU TO REMOVE AND PROHIBIT ANY BLOGS IN YOUR SITE THAT CONTAIN MY CLIENT’S NAME ADNAN OKTAR OR HIS PEN NAME HARUN YAHYA OR VARIOUS COMBINATION OF THESE 4 NAMES.

I obviously don’t know enough details about the situation, but blocking access to a million blogs because of these few?  That’s mind boggling.  Ed Darrell makes a good point:

I suggested in comments that protests should be made to the European Union. Turkey is working to gain admittance to the EU, and childish, totalitarian eruptions such as Oktar’s getting a court to censor a million blogs, significantly detract from Turkey’s chances and case.

Given that German courts censored all of Wikipedia for a trivial reason, I don’t have too much faith in this suggestion…except, of course, that it seems that half the opposition to Turkish membership in the EU is driven by xenophobia and racism and those people are likely to latch on to any reason to oppose Turkish membership in the EU.  Hmm…now I’m even more uncertain about the idea.

You never know, though.  It may be good jurisprudence under Turkish law, but I’m hoping it’s just a bad call, and that attention from “higher up” may nudge things in the right direction.