New Media Research MethodsAssignment 2: Internet Censorship ResearchInstructors: Erik Borra, Dr. Bernhard Rieder,Prof. Dr. Richard Rogers & Esther Weltevrede

Table of Contents

Introduction ................................................................................................................................... 3

Research Question........................................................................................................................ 4

Methodology................................................................................................................................... 5Defining the Kurdish web-sphere, choice of query and source set................................................5URL list building................................................................................................................................................. 6Queries used.......................................................................................................................................................... 7

Kurds and Turkey................................................................................................................................... 7Kurd independence............................................................................................................................... 7Kurd rights................................................................................................................................................ 7Kurd party................................................................................................................................................. 7

Harvesting, triangulation and censorship explorer............................................................................7The Censorship Explorer................................................................................................................................. 8

Findings ........................................................................................................................................... 9Analyzing the URL list...................................................................................................................................... 9Search Engine List Findings........................................................................................................................ 10Editorial List Findings .................................................................................................................................. 11

Discussion and Conclusion....................................................................................................... 11

Bibliography................................................................................................................................. 14

2

Introduction

The Internet is a decentralized global communication infrastructure that enables

users to overcome limitations and obstacles for the creation and distribution of

content throughout the world (Ozkan and Arikan 47). However, while the

Internet is often thought of as being an unlimited space where information is not

only floating freely, but also accessible anytime, from anywhere, the situation is

quite the contrary: Countries and corporations around the globe are increasingly

exercising their power by censoring information on the Internet. Among the

many countries that use Internet-censorship as a form of control is Turkey.

Under the ruling of its President, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, Turkey has been subject

to a multiple set of restrictions regarding the population’s use of the Internet. Not

only has the Turkish government banned social media platforms like YouTube on

several occasions in the past seven years, it also restricted access to Twitter back

in March of this year, ahead of the elections of Turkey´s prime Minister Erdoğan,

in order to avoid possible backlash from the population due to an ongoing

corruption scandal Erdoğan was involved in. While platforms like Twitter or

YouTube have been made accessible again, other web content has been more

thoroughly blocked and thus made inaccessible for people living in Turkey.

The frictions between the Turkish government and its people expand further not

only affecting daily politics and current elections. A tensioned case is the

relationship between Turkey and its Kurdish population. Turkey and Kurdistan

have a long history of conflict that began with the division of the Ottoman

Empire, in which various nation states were established after World War I. The

Kurdish State was not officially recognized, leading to its division amongst Syria,

Iraq, Iran and Turkey (Montgomery 9). Turkey eventually gained its

independence and months after the declaration of its Republic, claimed it needed

to fight to become an “invisible nation”. In order to do so, Turkey started

undertaking a ‘cleansing’ of its population, where all non-Turkish elements were

eliminated from the country – one such element was the Kurdish presence on the

territory. Ever since then, Kurds have been subject to continuous attack not only

on their ethnic, but also their cultural status, with the Turkish government even

putting a ban on their language.

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This report serves as an investigation of the Kurdish websphere within Turkey, in

order to examine whether this ban of the Kurdish population has been extended

to a ban of Kurdish web-content in Turkey. This idea results from a report by the

Open Net Initiative, suggesting that the Internet Service Provider (ISP) ‘Turk

Telecom’1 has blocked a number of websites containing information on Turkish

Kurds (Open Net Initiative n. pag.). Such a repressive approach towards Kurdish

web-content could be explained by Farris’ and Villeneuve’s work on “Measuring

Global Internet Filtering”, where the authors claim that “[…] politically motivated

filtering is characteristic of authoritarian and repressive regimes […]” (Farris and

Villeneuve 9). Also, the fact that a “[…] perceived threat to national security is a

common rationale for blocking [web] content […]” can be seen as a determinant

factor for why the Turkish government sees Kurdish web-content as threatening

and worthwhile to be censored (Farris and Villeneuve 10).

Research Question

To which extend does the Turkish state censor content of the Kurdish web-

sphere that might be considered subversive and dangerous by the Kurdish state?

1 The Turkish state owns 30% of Turk Telecom (cf. Türk Telekom n. pag.)

4

Methodology

Defining the Kurdish web-sphere, choice of query and source set

To analyze Turkish censorship of Kurd-related content that could be evaluated as

subversive or dangerous, it was necessary to define the properties of the Kurdish

web sphere. As Richard Rogers mentions, there are different ways of demarcating

the boundaries of a national web sphere, amongst which the location of the users

and the users’ language are the most fundamental distinctions. A detailed a priori

approach is the librarian one, which clusters web content in language

(Kurdish/non-Kurdish), location (from Kurdish/non-Kurdish territories) and

content (everything concerning Kurds) (Rogers 129, 130). These “principles” of

demarcating a national web sphere confront censorship researchers with a

variety of problems, also mentioned by Rogers in the case of Iran, which are

nevertheless applicable to the case being analyzed here (Roger 131).

Firstly, there are various languages and dialects besides the official Turkish

language that are spoken in Turkey. One of them is Kurmanji, which is also the

most commonly spoken Kurdish dialect in Turkey, Syria, Iran and Iraq, spoken by

80% of all Kurds. Furthermore it is likely that Kurdish Internet-users also read or

write content in a foreign language. Language is therefore a vague criterion to

define the Kurdish web sphere.

In order to narrow down the Kurdish language sphere, a focus was put on the

Kurdish dialect Kurmanji. The website www.globalglossary.org/en/en/kmr/ was

used to translate different queries into Kurmanji. As can be seen below, queries

such as [party] were used. In Kurmanji, the query [party] can have different

meanings, which required taking a closer look at their synonyms to determine

their adequate translations.

Secondly, Kurds live as an ethnic minority in a diaspora in different countries.

Hence, it would neither make sense to define a Kurdish web sphere by national

domain (there is no Kurdistan, no corresponding local Google domain and also

no official language setting for Kurd dialects in Google), nor by websites located

and authored by Kurds in a certain region, for this would exclude Kurds who

author websites in other regions of the world.

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URL list building

Given the fact that neither the Kurmanji language nor the location of server and

Webmaster can be used as criteria to define the Kurdish web-sphere, it was opted

to demarcate it by content referring to Kurds. To map the dimensions of the

censorship applied to this content, it was decided to look at a distinct part of the

Kurdish web-sphere – that is content referring to Kurds in the Turkish Google

domain, which contains politically critical content of the Kurd movement.

A sample-list of URLs was put together using edited lists, i. e. predefined

directories, as well as a result list of the Turkish Google domain. Edited lists of

the OpenNet Initiative and Wikipedia were manually scraped to define hosts

deemed to be subversive or illegal, according to the Turkish government (cf.

spreadsheet `editorial list´). In the case of Wikipedia, all Kurdish organizations

that are deemed illegal were identified and their host names documented using

Google search. The collected host-names represent illegal organizations and are

therefore likely to be censored.

Additionally, the Turkish domain Google.com.tr was used to determine the top

ten results of politically critical queries regarding Kurdish content in the Turkish

web sphere. For that, Google was used, as it is the most commonly used engine in

Turkey, with 96% of its population using the search engine in 2013

(Returnonnow n. pag.). Unspecified queries were applied to make use of Google´s

PageRank algorithm and eventually draw conclusions about the societal concerns

in Turkey reflected by Google.com.tr. This approach’s aim is to detect new

website blockings that contribute to the already known edited list of blockings

mentioned above.

Query design

For this research, queries in Turkish and Kurmanji were used in order to assure

that the final URL-list contains a wide range of critical topics in both languages.

Since none of the researchers working on this report were familiar with the

syntax of the Kurmanji language, it was important to vary the order of the

Kurmanji queries typed in the search bar, as different results were for instance

obtained by switching the order of the two Kurmanji words kurd (Kurd) and maf

(right).

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Additionally, it was important that queries reflect politically critical issues, such

as the recognition of Kurdish rights in Turkey, the relationship between the

Turkish state and the Kurds or the Kurdish movement striving for autonomy and

its own nation state, namely Kurdistan. Since quotation marks would have only

taken into consideration the exact queries, they were avoided to increase the

range of relevant results.

Queries used

Kurdistan

[Kürdistan] Turkish; [Kurdistan] Kurmanji

Kurds and Turkey

[Kurd Türkiye] Turkish; [Tirkiye Kurd] Kurmanji; [Kurd Tirkiye] Kurmanji.

Kurd independence2

[Kurd bağımsızlık] Turkish; [kurd serxwebûn] Kurmanji; [serxwebûn kurd]

Kurmanji.

Kurd rights3

[Kurd haklari] Turkish; [kurd maf] Kurmanji; [maf kurd] Kurmanji.

Kurd party

[Kurd parti] Turkish; [kurd partî] Kurmanji; [partî kurd] Kurmanji.

Harvesting, triangulation and censorship explorer

After having retrieved the top 10 results for our queries, the URLs were

harvested, adding “http://” to the host names and returning unique webpages in

order to avoid doubled results. Afterwards, the URLs were inserted in one

spreadsheet. Last but not least, triangulation was used to filter URLs to identify

doubled results and get a list of unique URLs (cf. HTML file Triangulate URLs).

2According to Global Glossary bağımsızlık and serxwebûn are the most commonly used Turkish and Kurmanji words for ‘independence’.

3According to Global Glossary maf is the most commonly used Kurmanji word for ‘right’. Synonyms to [maf] can be privilege, justice, right or claim. Therefore, it was inferred that [maf] would be the adequate query in Kurmanji. The singular form was used since the translator program was unable to give the plural form. Given this technical constraint, a

slight deviation of meaning was accepted (right vs. rights) in the Kurmanji query.

7

The Censorship Explorer

The VPN client “Astrill” and different Turkish HTTP proxies from different ISPs

based in different locations in Turkey were used. A VPN client is usually more

stable and does not harm people who mistakenly could have left their proxies

open for public use. For reasons of validity, it was necessary to double-check the

results using proxies.

Before using the proxy servers, their stability was checked by randomly

accessing any website. In case of time-outs or no responses, the assumption was

made that they are not stable and would not present valid data. Only the proxies

were used that displayed the HTTP response-code “200 OK” and gave valid

results after two test-drives.

In order to detect blocking messages in Turkish, YouTube-websites were

accessed, using the chosen VPN / HTTP-proxies mentioned above. The HTTP

proxy 78.188.239.176:8086 returned the message ‘Ulaşmak istediğiniz Sayfa

Engellendi!’ (English for `blocked page you want to achieve´) when accessing a

YouTube website4. This message was saved in a Word-document and then

inserted into the Censorship Explorer.

Two different settings were necessary in order to use the VPN client/HTTP

proxies. To use the VPN client the location/language settings were changed to

Turkey/Turkish. Since it could be assumed that the VPN client responds quickly

to requests from the research browser the timeout was set to 20 seconds.

In the case of the HTTP proxies the language setting of proxy and control server

were switched to Turkish in order to enable both servers to retrieve the web

pages in Turkish. Finally, the timeout limit was put to 30 seconds since the

proxies respond more slowly than the VPN client.

For both, the VP client and the proxies, the message `Ulaşmak istediğiniz Sayfa

Engellendi´ was inserted in the Censorship Explorer to allow it to search for this

message in the requested URLs. Before running the Censorship explorer the

browser language was changed to Turkish so the Censorship Explorer would

retrieve the blocking message `Ulaşmak istediğiniz Sayfa Engellendi´ in Turkish.

After the retrieval the results were saved as HTML-files to compare them later

on.

4http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X0Svet3PON0

8

Findings

Analyzing the URL list

Before considering the results of the Censorship Explorer, it is important to

reflect on the URL list used for this research as well as the proxy servers used. As

was mentioned in the methodology part, changing the order of Kurmanji queries

displayed slightly different result pages, with a change in the order of results as

well as URLs displayed. The range of URLs thus became wider.

Triangulation underlined the fact that most SERPs5 contain unique URLs and

rarely share URLs with other SERPs. The Triangulation Tool provided evidence

that the Turkish version of Wikipedia is the primary source of information on the

Kurdish issue within the Turkish Google domain. On six out of the 14 lists, two

out of four results were Wikipedia pages, while in three different SERPs seven

out of 19 results were again Wikipedia results.

After reconfiguring the browser´s Internet connection using the proxies

78.188.239.176:8086 and 195.175.239.168:80, the IP address, the ISP and the

location were double-checked using Whatismyipaddress.com. The webpage

showed proxies with settings different from the ones saved in the list of the

Censorship Explorer (Compare Image 1 and 2). Thus, the list of proxies in the

Censorship Explorer cannot be considered 100% reliable.

Image 1: IP address and position of proxy 78.188.239.176:8086 according to the Censorship

Explorer

5Search Engine Result Pages

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Image 2: IP address and position of proxy 78.188.239.176:8086 displayed on Whatismyipaddress.com

Search Engine List Findings

The results of the Censorship Explorer do not indicate any message of censorship

or blocking. The response code “200 OK” that the proxy server received can

therefore be interpreted as unblocked content.

The majority of inaccessible webpages – 29, 5 % of all pages – displayed a “404

Not Found” response code. According to Mozilla.org, such a response could be a

sign that the server does not want to display the reason for the refusal of the

request (Mozilla n. pag.).

The second most common response code that indicated a refusal was “503

Service Unavailable”. According to Mozilla.org, this means that the server is

currently unable to handle the request due to a server-maintenance or overload

(Mozilla n. pag.). It is worthwhile to mention that both the proxy server, as well

as the Netherlands server of the Censorship Explorer indicated exactly the same

results for these responses. If there was a difference, it was due to a server

timeout of the proxy server. The proxy server was timed-out in 5, 8 % of all cases.

Only one URL showed the code “403 Forbidden”, namely a link to an archived

article of NYTimes.com which was only forbidden because only premium

customers may access it.

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Editorial List Findings

Since the editorial list is significantly shorter than the search engine list, it was

possible to use all Turkish proxies that responded to the test-drive.

As in the search engine URL list, the Censorship Explorer could not indicate any

messages of blocking or censorship. The proxy servers showed different results

and no clear pattern could be determined. No “403 Forbidden” response code

was found, instead, response codes ranging from “500” to “503” were indicated,

which are classified as internal server error responses (Mozilla n. pag.).

Discussion and Conclusion

During the data retrieval a number of problems occurred. Generally speaking a

proxy server may have special rights of access to webpage due to its location or

the ISP running the proxy. During this study, it was not possible to clearly detect

the location and ISP of the proxy servers used (cf. page 9). Hence the results

might be biased by special rights of access. Therefore it might be that the

retrieved “200 OK” response is not generally applicable to all regions and ISPs in

Turkey. Additionally only one proxy6 was stable enough to run through the search

engine URL list without crashing the Censorship Explorer. Therefore no other

proxies or VPNs could serve to double-check the results and validity is

questionable.

It was opted to reconfigure the browser´s Internet connection using a Turkish

proxy server contained in the list of the Censorship Explorer that was seemingly

run by the Turkish Telecom (78.188.239.176:8086). Afterwards the URLs

contained in the editorial list were manually accessed in order to detect and

verify a possible block of these URLs through the Turkish Telecom. At this point it

should taken into consideration that the settings of the proxy could not clearly be

detected (cf. p. 9). It came out that www.pkkonline.com, the official website of the

Kurdish Worker´s Party, as well as www.pajk.com, the website of the Kurdistan

Women´s liberation party were blocked. Additionally, it was detected that

YouTube could not be access using the Turkish Telecom proxy server. Instead a

“Access denied by Labris WebFilter” was shown.

6 195.175.239.168:80

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Image 3: Using proxy 78.188.239.176:8086, the YouTube-homepage appears as blocked by ‘Labris

WebFilter’

These findings firstly correspond with the ones from the OpenNet Initiative

mentioned above. Secondly, it can be observed that also YouTube was blocked

even if it officially is not blocked any more as mentioned in the introduction.

Furthermore, the different results by using the Censorship Explorer or by

retrieving data manually indicate that the validity of the results is highly

questionable. This might either stem from the fact that proxies with different

rights to access were used, that the Censorship Explorer is not capable of

detecting certain blockings. The first option is likely since the OpenNet Initiative

clearly indicated in their report on the Turkish censorship in 2010 that the Turk

Telecom blocked for instance webpages of the Kurdish Workers Party (OpenNet

Initiative n. pag.). Thus censorship might be mainly exercised through the ISP

Turk Telecom while other ISPs offer less restrictive access rights.

What appears clear about Turkish censorship is that it has changed over time,

how it is different in terms of geo localization and how it is likely to be a 2nd and

3rd generation one. This study analyzed the extend of first generation censorship

meaning direct blockings of ISPs, keywords, domains, servers and IP adresses

(Deibert, Rohozinski 23). As suggested by Deibert and Rohozinski more recent

control strategies and censorship might rather „shape and affect when and how

information is received by users“ (Ibid. 16). According to Deibert and Rohozinski

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the second generation censorship uses legal and normative rules to control

content „just-in-time“ (Ibid. 24), that means when information is considered to

be the most relevant to be blocked at a certain point of time (e.g. muting political

oppositions during elections). As mentioned in the introduction the just-in-time

blocking of YouTube by the Turkish state was a second generation censorship.

Third generation censorship goes even further and comprises the use of

counterinformation or surveillance through data mining (Ibid. 27). Rohozinksi

state that ONI censorship research tools are not suitable to investigate in that

type of censorship (Ibid. 17). Censorship thus becomes more subtle and harder

to investigate. Though, digital methods can only investigate the 1st generation

one and are not applicable for an in-depth study of a complex and constantly

changing web sphere as the Turkish one.

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