Turkey has blocked all the access inside the country to the online encyclopaedia Wikipedia without giving any official reasons.
According to ‘Turkey Blocks’ monitoring group, the site was inaccessible from 08:00 (05:00 GMT) by order of the Turkish authorities. People in the capital Istanbul were unable to access any Wikipedia pages without using a Virtual Private Network (VPN).
“After technical analysis and legal consideration based on the Law Nr. 5651, an administrative measure has been taken for this website,” Turkey’s Information and Communication Technologies Authority was quoted as saying.
However, the provisional order would need to be backed by a full court ruling in the next few days.
This is not the first time Turkey blocking access to popular websites. The country, on several occasions, had blocked Facebook, Twitter and Youtube. The country ranks 155 of 180 in the press freedom index of the Reporters without Borders.
