By DPA,
Ankara : Turkish Internet users regained access to millions of blogs Tuesday after a court ordered a temporary reversal of a ban on a blog hosting website imposed Friday.
The move reopens access to Blogger, a blog hosting service owned by Google. The service was banned by a court after a Turkish station complained that some 60 blogs were illegally showing videos of Turkish football matches.
Attempts to visit the site diverted users to a notice in English and Turkish explaining that access had been suspended.
Broadcaster NTV Tuesday reported that the Diyarbakir court had ordered the ban to be lifted and called for “missing evidence”. The court could re-implement the ban once the missing evidence is provided, according to the broadcaster’s website.
Turkish internet users are used to court-ordered bans of a large range of websites. The video-sharing site Youtube has been banned for hosting a video insulting the founder of the Turkish republic, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk.
Adnan Oktar, an Islamic creationist has also been successful in getting a variety of sites banned by court decisions, including blog hoster WordPress and the personal website of renowned biologist and atheist Richard Dawkins.
According to the government’s Telecommunications Board, as of Aug 18, 2008, 853 sites were blocked in Turkey.