Regardless of your nationality and current hometown, you are probably aware of the strange situation going on in Turkey for some time. For the ones that doesn’t know, here is a brief heads-up:

Some international websites (the most popular being YouTube.com, followed by others such as Slide.com and Alibaba.com) with heavy user generated content are being sued in Turkish courts for permitting such content that insults Turkish people and heritage. In case these websites do not comply with the content removal request, Turkish courts request access restriction from Turkish Internet Authority, and the ban gets put into action in a few days. Currently, a handful of websites are inaccesible through Turkish ISPs.

This is no breaking news for most regular readers, but another set of developments lately arose with a so-called "social movement" coming from some Turkish webmasters, publishers and authors. It is a no-miss event playing only till August 20 evening, so I suggest you take a look through Turkish websites such as Webrazzi.com and AnaFikir.com.

In its core, these 200+ of "social-moving" websites put a landing page (script) on their domain to meet first-time entrants with the following message "Access to this website is restricted as decided by its owner" in an effort to get a sarcastic reference that YouTube receives "Access to this website is restricted as requested by Turkish courts".

It is a completely different discussion whether the move is right, wrong or the most effective one. Instead, I will put light on one subject that easily passed through each of these 200+ website managers’ minds. As Turkish citizens by nature (I suppose), I would expect these next-gen website authors to care at least a fraction of how much they care about Turkish internet freedom as they care for upholding Turkish values and heritage. Burning with passion to freed Turkish internet, I was sad to see that these people didn’t put similar emphasis in protesting these major international websites and requesting the removal of such insulting content. Instead, as I would expect for most superficially activist-minded people, they are burning with the desire to "be a part of the shiny, PRry social movement of Turkey and gain some brand recognition and Resume bullet" instead of the duty to "do the right things in the right order for the sake of social awareness".

Please find, read and elaborate on the following content on this subject:

Turkey’s TechCrunch clone style blog on the subject (Turkish).

Original TechCrunch play on the subject. (English). Woohoo, Turks are in TechCrunch! Sad that not with a killer startup though.

A Turkish VC General Partner’s standpoint on the subject. (English)