The Turkish father state

A court ruling in Turkey that has now been rescinded banned access to the YouTube video portal because it showed a video containing offensive material about Kemal Atatürk, the founder of the Turkish state. Ioannis Grigoriadis, a lecturer for Turkish Studies at the University of Athens, comments in the Greek daily I Kathimerini: "Citizens are not seen as autonomous and individual beings but as little children. ... The state has assigned itself the task of protecting the 'endangered citizen' and thus become its father. ... But the 'loving father' soon changes into a not so loving master. The state decides what the citizen sees, ... what he reads ... and sometimes it censors the Internet, the greatest success of modern times regarding individual freedom."

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