LONDON – In the latest round of social media wars involving Turkey and its dissident Kurds, Facebook on Sunday blocked postings on Rudaw English’s page after the deleting pictures that depicted the house of Abdullah Ocalan, the jailed Kurdish leader. The Rudaw page had published a documentary photo-series featuring the house in Amara village, southeast Turkey, in apparent violation of Facebook’s policies. Facebook has been criticised on many occasions by Kurdish activists for filtering Kurdish content that depicted Ocalan or his organization, the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK). Despite campaigns for an end to intense filtering, Facebook appears not to have relaxed or modified its community policy guidelines. Ocalan has been held on the prison island of Imrali since his capture in 1999. However, he is currently engaged in a peace process with the Kurdish government to end formally the three decades’ war his movement waged on the central government. Facebook did not respond to inquiries from Rudaw on the blocking of its page. In 2012, the British Daily Mail showed a leaked Facebook document which revealed the website’s international compliance in blocking sites that supported PKK or Abdullah Ocalan. A Moroccan whistleblower was said to have been paid $1 an hour by a third party company to filter Facebook posts that were in violation of the social networking site’s policies. Bahoz Sulaiman, a 25-year-old Kurdish activist who lives in London said, “I have had my Facebook accounts blocked on several occasions for posting pictures of PKK or Abdullah Ocalan, which is more than ironic given that groups such as the Islamic State militants can post as many pictures as they want.” He also added, “What is actually scary, is the number of ultra-Turkish nationalists who almost seem to be employed, constantly reporting pictures that Kurdish activists post on Facebook.” “I don’t understand what community policy I have violated by posting a picture of Abdullah Ocalan? I can post a picture of the notorious [ISIS leader] Abu Bakr al-Baghdad and not get banned, but a picture of a political prisoner will block my account on Facebook,” he said. In March, the Turkish government blocked access to YouTube, following a similar ban on Twitter, in an effort to end the spread of corruption allegations. The ban was eventually lifted as the country’s constitutional court ruled that it breached freedom of expression.
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