From 29 April 2017 to 15 January 2020, the online encyclopedia Wikipedia was blocked in Turkey. On 29 April 2017, Turkish authorities blocked online access to all its language editions throughout the country. The restrictions were imposed by Turkish Law No. 5651, due to the English version's article on state-sponsored terrorism (in the version of 29 April 2017), where Turkey was described as a sponsor country for the Islamic State and Al-Qaeda. Turkish courts viewed the article as a public manipulation of mass media. Requests by the Turkish Information and Communication Technologies Authority to edit several articles to comply with Turkish law were not acted on.
Wikimedia Foundation Executive Director Katherine Maher said in May 2018 that the Foundation was "not sure why there is still a ban". In March 2018, Wikipedia's Facebook page started the "We Miss Turkey" () campaign and replaced the black censor bar over the Wikipedia logo with a red one. It also had an accompanying hashtag of the same name.
On 26 December 2019, the Constitutional Court of Turkey ruled that the block of Wikipedia violated human rights and ordered it to be lifted. On 15 January 2020, the block of Wikipedia in Turkey was lifted.
Background
Some countries have faulted Turkey for funding Islamist rebel groups in Syria, including al-Qaeda's affiliate in Syria, the al-Nusra Front. In October 2014, U.S. Vice President Joe Biden said that Turkey, Saudi Arabia and the UAE had "poured hundreds of millions of dollars and tens of thousands of tons of weapons into anyone who would fight against Al-Assad".
The block occurred on 29 April 2017, two weeks after the Turkish constitutional referendum, which was held on 16 April.
On 25 April, Turkey conducted several airstrikes on YPG, YPJ, and PKK facilities in both Syria and Iraq (Sinjar). 40 militants, including five Peshmerga soldiers, were killed at Iraq's Sinjar Mountains, and more than 20 YPG and YPJ fighters were killed on Syria's Mount Karakoc. The Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) threatened to withdraw from the operation to capture Raqqa if the United States did not take measures to stop Turkey's airstrikes against the group. In response, the US began to patrol the border alongside SDF troops in order to force a ceasefire between its two allies.
On 26 April, continuing the purges that started in 2016, 1,009 police officers were detained based on accusations of being secretly involved with the Gülenist network within the Turkish police force. 9,100 officers have been suspended. On 29 April, 3,974 more civil servants were dismissed. Media outlets and reporters were heavily targeted; 190 news organizations were banned and at least 120 journalists were imprisoned. Together with the ban of Wikipedia and television dating game shows, The New York Times described the moves as "an expand[ing] crackdown on dissent and free expression".
Legal context
Law No. 5651, known as the Internet Act (IA), was enacted on 4 May 2007. The purpose of this law was described by the now-defunct Presidency of Telecommunication and Communication as follows: "There are two reasons for the law to be brought. The first reason: to determine the liability and the responsibility of collective use providers, access providers, location providers, and content providers, which are the main actors of the Internet. The other reason is to determine the procedures and fundamentals related to the specific crimes committed over the Internet and fighting these through content, location and access providers." More recently, the law has been used to censor individuals, journalists and the media. As of June 2017, at least 127,000 websites are estimated to have been blocked in Turkey, along with another 95,000 individual web pages. According to the 2018 Web Report of the Freedom of Expression Association () access to 245,826 websites was blocked in Turkey by the end of 2018, with access to a total of 54,904 websites and domain names blocked in 2018 alone.
Block
On the morning of 29 April 2017, following news from Turkey Blocks that all language editions of Wikipedia had been blocked in Turkey, several websites published articles about the event. Reuters and the BBC reported that the Turkish authorities had blocked all access to Wikipedia in the country beginning at 5:00 AM GMT. Turkey's Information and Communication Technologies Authority simply stated: "After technical analysis and legal consideration based on the Law Nr. [sic] 5651 [governing the internet], an administrative measure has been taken for this website." Users reported that they could only access Wikipedia using tools such as private VPNs.