RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN UNRESTRICTED USE AND AVAILABLE ACCESS OF THE INTERNET AND LEVEL OF DEMOCRACY
The internet is the most important media to reach all people in the world. People use the internet not only to do their jobs but also have fun by surfing entertaining websites. They check e-mails, read news, watch videos, search for every kind of information, download music and films, share photographs, write blogs, create profiles in social websites, look at ad s , play games, chat with people and do many other things every day.
Some countries try to control usage of the internet by rules and restrictions. These restrictions are mostly about sexuality and piracy. For example, in Turkey Youtube, Last fm, Megaupload, Diziizle and these kind of websites are not available to access. I think the governments’ aims are based on political reasons and stategies. Although some restrictions are for the benefit of children, most of them make people unhappy because it is an useless of prohibition. There is a quote about this situation; stolen fruit is the sweetest so people create many paths to access forbidden areas. VNP and Proxy services provide people access all forbidden websites. There are also websites that are only being used for this purpose.
Alternative ways are always better
For example, K-tunnel usage started in 2008, and it grew concurrently closing Youtube. Its hits have been decreasing since 2009 because people find it easier to reach unaccessable websites. Changing DNS codes is the most common way to Access these sites. There are many of program files, people can obtain them in internet and they can easily set and use.
However many people are not very experienced about the internet so they cannot use these solutions and cannot access these sites, thus youtube hits are not totally zeroi now but they are decreased very much. Same people use alternative ways to access Youtube English according to Google Trends. It means half of the people who use Youtube by alternative routes are highly educated.
When we see this alignment, we cannot see the three biggest cities in the list. It indicates that these people do not spend lots of time on the internet. They use mostly when they need, but other people use Youtube as a routine and this is a socioeconomic effect of internet usage in Turkey.
According to statistics, the Internet started in 1991 in Turkey. For many years its usage was limited in small numbers of people bacuse many people had no computer and internet connection in their houses. Internet cafes arosed many years after 1991 and computer prices decreased in 2002, usage of internet increases in Turkey. People are using it very insensibly,the government claims that most of these prohibitions are based on these reasons. I think it is not compeletely true, but even if it were true, they can find alternative solutions for preventing harmful usage.
Democracy is a good excuse
Democracy is the most popular issue at election speeches. Every political party claims to support democratic standards in the whole country. It is a very sensitive topic for people because there have been democracy discussions since 1923 and there is no agreement between politicians and public. Politicians always argue in terms of European Union Standards to get votes.
According to Lewis, “Successive governments of Turkey wisely did not attempt to introduce full democracy all at once, but instead went through successive phases of limited democracy, laying the foundation for further development, and, at the same time, encouraging the rise of civil society. This process may be seen in many different aspects of life in the country, as, for example, in the newspaper press, which is certainly free, and which one hopes in the course of time will also become responsible, and in trade unions, about which one might make the same observation. Of interest in this connection is the decision made by the then prime minister of Turkey, Süleyman Demirel, to restore to the trade unions assets that had previously been placed under a sequestration order. This was not because he regarded the trade unions as political supporters of his--indeed, they were quite the reverse--but because of the realization that the existence of such powerful and entrenched interests is a safeguard for democratic institutions, which other interests might otherwise seek to curtail, suspend, or destroy.” (Lewis, 1994)
We can say that governments forbid to entry some websites for political reasons but these regulations are common in low developed countries as we can see in their democratic levels. People find alternative ways to access forbidden websites and they creates many different advertisement areas. Government restrictions are not very efficient to forbid harmful content because people ,who want to reach them, can easily use these alternative ways and regulations are always charming in these situations.
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Bibliography:
Google Trends. (n.d.). Retrieved March 23, 2010, from
http://trends.google.com
Lewis. (1994, March, from Middle East Quarterly:
http://www.meforum.org/216/why-turkey-is-the-only-muslim-democracy
Economist. (2008). Democracy Index 2008. Retrieved March 17, 2010, from The Economist:
http://a330.g.akamai.net
