Ankara- Turkish internet users have been blocked from accessing the popular video site YouTube following a row in the past week over a number of anti-Turkish videos posted on the site. Access to the site was blocked Wednesday morning following an injunction issued by an Istanbul criminal court on Tuesday, the Anadolu news agency reported.
Turkish newspapers in the past week have highlighted that a number of anti-Turkish videos, mainly posted by Greek nationals, had been placed on the site in the past few weeks.
Some of the offending videos included insults to the founder of the modern Turkish republic, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk. Another showed Greek soldiers singing songs about how they would kill Turks, the English-language newspaper Today's Zaman reported.
Milliyet newspaper claimed on Wednesday that a campaign it had launched led to YouTube being bombarded with 220,000 e-mails calling for the videos to be removed from the site.
YouTube took down the offending videos but the Istanbul court on Tuesday ordered that Turk Telekom restrict access to the site. On Tuesday evening Turk Telekom that it would comply with whatever order it received.
As of Wednesday morning anyone attempting to reach the YouTube site from Turkey was greeted with a simple message that said "access to www.youtube.com site has been suspended."
It was not clear how long the site will remain blocked by Turk Telekom's servers.
