Tyler Cross
Updated on: December 24, 2023
Censorship in Turkey has increased with a new wave of bans on VPNs. Turkey, a country already known for being strict on digital censorship, has banned at least 16 major VPN providers from use.
The ban is likely to be another attempt to prevent its citizens from using unauthorized websites — Turkey wants total control over what information its citizens have access to. This extends to both local and international news outlets and various forms of media. Overall, Turkey is one of the most high-censorship countries in the world.
The new wave of bans comes in response to VPN use skyrocketing around the country. Legislation passed in 2007 allows the government to enforce national VPN bans.
“We are facing the biggest repression and censorship in the history of the Republic of Turkey,” says Ali Safa Korkut, Project Coordinator at Free Web Turkey. “The government has also taken steps to silence international media, blocking the websites of the Turkish editions of Deutsche Welle and Voice of America in 2022.”
Top providers like Surfshark and ProtonVPN have both confirmed that they’re having connection issues with users in Turkey.
Some users have confirmed finding workarounds that let them connect to their VPN and browse the internet without restriction. There are simply too many tools and methods for the government to completely ban content from someone who truly wants to access it.
Solutions like using the Tor browser, multiple VPN connections, and multihop servers continue to be (somewhat) reliable for citizens of Turkey, who are used to the strict conditions.
“People in Turkey are no longer surprised by these censorship decisions because almost thousands of websites and news items are censored every day by court orders,” Korkut said. “We react to the censorship, but we know that it will not change anything,”
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- Source: https://www.safetydetectives.com/news/censorship-in-turkey-ramps-up-with-new-vpn-ban-wave/
