Turkey blocks YouTube after icon insulted

ISTANBUL, Turkey — Looking to check out the latest videos of cavorting kittens and lovelorn lip-synchers on YouTube? If you live in Turkey, you're out of luck.

A Turkish court, acting on a prosecutor's recommendation, on Wednesday ordered the blocking of access to the enormously popular free video-sharing Web site because it featured clips that allegedly insulted Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, the founder of the modern Turkish state.

Turkey's largest telecommunications provider, Turk Telekom, which has a near-monopoly in Internet access in this country of 70 million, said it had voluntarily agreed to block the site. The company took no position on whether the video clips in question had in fact denigrated Ataturk, a revered figure here.

YouTube, which is owned by Mountain View, Calif.-based Google Inc., issued a statement expressing disappointment in the Turkish government's ban.

"The Internet is an international phenomenon, and while technology can bring great opportunity and access to information globally, it can also present new and unique cultural challenges," YouTube said. "We respect the authorities in Turkey and are committed to working with them to resolve this. We should note, however, that the video in question is no longer on the site."

It's not the first time YouTube has been banned. The Australian state of Victoria recently banned it from government schools in a crackdown on cyber-bullying after a gang of male students videotaped their assault on a 17-year-old girl on the outskirts of Melbourne.

In Turkey, it is a crime punishable by imprisonment to denigrate "Turkishness" or Ataturk. The statute is sometimes used to prosecute people who criticize official government policy on a wide range of sensitive issues.

The national taboo on freewheeling debate took a lethal turn in January, when newspaper editor Hrant Dink, who had campaigned for Turkey to acknowledge that the deaths of millions of Armenians in 1915 constituted a genocide, was gunned down in daylight outside the offices of his bilingual newspaper.

The Hurriyet newspaper reported on Wednesday that YouTube had received tens of thousands of e-mails protesting the depiction of Ataturk as a homosexual, and that the video clips in question had been removed.