8 ms·

Turkey has blocked Google DNS access to Twitter

299 points by _ks3e 12y ago

TrainedMonkey 12y ago
Wow, Turkey is really going nuts. I am surprised, because normally you hear "social media ban" and you think some dictatorship. One thing is certain, while this is going on, Turkey can kiss EU membership ambitions goodbye.
- kaonashi 12y ago
  >Turkey can kiss EU membership ambitions goodbye. Probably all the better for Turkey.
  - s_dev 12y ago
    I doubt that. Turkey would be better off in the EU as would Ukraine or at least the popular opinions of common people would suggest. Turkey is in NATO so it's a completely different ball park to Ukraine. They would be better off economically and culturally. Europe is more harmonious than the the other spheres of influence surrounding Turkey namely the Middle East and Russia.
    - enraged_camel 12y ago
      Nope, not the case. The Turkish economy is very strong, and the workforce is young and energetic. If Turkey joined the EU, the aging European population and the crumbling economies of Greece, Italy and Spain would be a drag on the growth of the Turkish economy. Essentially, the only major benefit EU membership would give Turks is the ability to freely travel around Europe without needing passport visas.
      - mkuhn 12y ago
        And maybe free access to a huge market to sell all the goods your growing economy produces to!?
      - Ygg2 12y ago
        While workforce being young and energetic is helpful, it's not the sole reason of someone's economy being strong. I'm pretty sure most African countries have way younger population. It's not like Turks already don't go to Germany to work.
      - binarycrusader 12y ago
        The Turkish economy isn't going to remain strong if they keep doing stupid things like this. The free flow of information is vital to the growth and sustaining of an economy.
        enraged_camel 12y ago
        That's actually our greatest hope. If foreign investment dries up as a result of political instability, enough people might stop voting for him that he might be outed in a semi-democratic process (if he doesn't rig the elections as usual, that is). Otherwise, things will end in violence.
        pknerd 12y ago
        Really? What do you say about China?
        oblio 12y ago
        When you have 1.5 billion people the game is played at an entirely different level. One which Turkey is highly unlikely to reach.
        stevoo 12y ago
        and have every single kind of mineral deposit in the world, with some that are only mined there. China is on a completely different level as oblio already said :)
        theverse 12y ago
        I think Erdogan sees China as a model for the future, as a provider of cheap labor. So, Turkey doesn't need to intellectually integrate with the rest of the world.
      - weavejester 12y ago
        There's a big difference between being able to travel to a country without a visa, and being able to freely emigrate there, which is what EU membership provides. Turkey's economy may be growing, but the GDP per capita is a quarter that of wealthier countries like the UK or Germany. Joining the EU would also give Turkey a seat at the table. Turkey has a large population, and would therefore get a large representation at the European Parliament.
    - kaonashi 12y ago
      > They would be better off economically Considering the experience of Spain, Italy, Portugal, Italy, etc. in the EU thus far, I highly doubt that conclusion.
      - s_dev 12y ago
        Those experiences are commonly attributed to the EMU not the EU.
      - mercurial 12y ago
        Are you contending that the EU did not have a huge positive influence on the Spanish economy from the time it joined the EU until the economic crisis? The fact that the Spanish government, much like the Irish, let a bubble form, isn't, as far as I know, the fault of the EU. I agree that the current policy of austerity is an extremely bitter pill to swallow, but seeing the influence of the EU on the southernmost member states only in light of recent events is mistaken. Of course, it is possible that you simply dislike market economy, but that's a very different debate.
        kaonashi 12y ago
        Here's an excellent run-down of the inherent flaws in the EU institutional arrangements. http://www.lrb.co.uk/v14/n19/wynne-godley/maastricht-and-all-that http://www.lrb.co.uk/v14/n19/wynne-godley/maastricht-and-all... tl;dr everyone can't be a net exporter at the same time
  - seanccox 12y ago
    I tend to agree. Though the carrot of EU membership has been instrumental in motivating a few, minor reforms, mostly it just becomes a distracting process (for both parties). It was the dream of Ataturk that Turkey be a European nation, but it doesn't seem particularly plausible now.
- josefresco 12y ago
  Hopefully because Turkey is "democratic" they'll simply vote out the idiots who made such short-sighted decisions.
  - egeozcan 12y ago
    Democracy is not pluralism but people with enough money/connections can keep abusing the ignorance of the masses on any subject to gain so much power that they stop caring about the minorities. My political knowledge is very limited so I wonder what kind of measures exist in modern democracies to fight that? Is it just a matter of education? And, what happens when education becomes just another tool for propaganda?
- pjc50 12y ago
  Exactly how democratic it is is very much in question: http://www.opendemocracy.net/arab-awakening/halil-gurhanli/can-turkey-handle-free-and-fair-elections http://www.opendemocracy.net/arab-awakening/halil-gurhanli/c... It's a good example of how pluralism is a more important aspect of democracy than the actual voting. People like to complain about the US two-party system and condemn obvious one-party states, but the reality of a lot of recent or fragile democracies is that they are one-and-a-bit party states. There's an establishment and an opposition, and the opposition are allowed to exist but have a limited influence on actual control.
  - redthrowaway 12y ago
    For an example of this, look at how the ANC has dominated South African governance for the last 20 years, and the cost that's had in terms of corruption and development of civil society.
  - saraid216 12y ago
    I wonder whether or not it'd do any good to enshrine opposition factions in a government. I have a vague notion of requiring budgetary support, but I can't really imagine any specifics I'd be happy with. AFAIK, opposition parties (and political parties in general) haven't been included in any constitutions at all. #thoughtexperiment #whimsy
- hospes 12y ago
  I think Turkey has a lot more complex issues before they can be seriously considered as a EU candidate: - Occupation of Cyprus (EU member state) populated mostly by Greeks (Greece is EU member as well) (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turkish_invasion_of_Cyprus http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turkish_invasion_of_Cyprus) - Armenian Genocide of 1915. 1.5 million Armenians were killed by Turkish government, because of being Christians. 21 Countries and 43 U.S. states have recognized the Armenian Genocide. Turkey denies the Armenian Genocide. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Armenian_Genocide http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Armenian_Genocide) They constantly suppress rights of Kurds.
  - egeozcan 12y ago
    Yes, no other European country has any similar issues. Greece should close its borders immediately to prevent us barbarians from entering the EU again! Seriously, I agree that Turkey needs to do a lot to rise up to the European standards but I don't think it helps the conversation to bring these sensitive issues up every time you see the words EU and Turkey in the same sentence. edit: Dear down-voters, I understand your sensitivity on the issue but please try to understand what I'm arguing against. I actually accept the Armenian Genocide, and support Kurdish rights, and the rights of any other minorities. What I'm arguing against is this continuous flame-war. See my other comments on those issues if you challenge my honesty. Thanks.
    - mercurial 12y ago
      Many other countries had or still have difficulty coming to terms with their past: France until relatively recently with its colonial past, the UK (or so it seems seen from continental Europe), Japan with its numerous warcrimes during WWII, Algeria, or even the US. I can understand why repetitive, double-standard bashing would become tedious after a short while.
    - stevoo 12y ago
      The problem with this sensitive issues is that they are still un-resolved. Unfortunately your goverment does not want to do anything about them and keep on doing what they fucking want. When Erdogan steps down, and hopefully a more civilized, non-military person takes over then nothing will change. In the mean time, Kurds are still gonna suffer, Cyprus will still be divide in half, and everything else that they keep on doing.
- gioele 12y ago
  > Turkey can kiss EU membership ambitions goodbye. Why? Single EU countries have widespread censoring infrastructure in place and IP-based bans are common and normal. They are just not at stupid to ban hi-profile sites yet. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_censorship_in_Germany http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_censorship_in_Germany http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_censorship_in_France http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_censorship_in_France http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_censorship_in_Italy#Internet_censorship http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_censorship_in_Italy#In... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_censorship_in_Denmark http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_censorship_in_Denmark http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_censorship_in_the_Republic_of_Ireland http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_censorship_in_the_Repu... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_censorship_in_the_United_Kingdom http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_censorship_in_the_Unit... Please note the common pattern of the justifications: censorship starts often with "terrorism/children abuse/pornography", then covers "counterfeit goods/media", finally "libel/hate speech".
  - tootie 12y ago
    Those are almost cases of illegal content being blocked or removed. Classified information, copyright violations. No one is having opinions or new repressed. Turkey is proactively silencing dissent that has no other channel. PM Erdogan was caught red-handed taking bribes and it seems the Turkish MSM is already intimidated into quiescence and now they try to block whole sections of the internet to hide the truth.
    - pg_is_a_butt 12y ago
      in america, we call "taking bribes", "working with lobbyists"... corruption all the way down. feel free to complain all you want. it doesn't stop.
    - yk 12y ago
      Turkey is also just blocking "illegal content."
  - thisiswrong 12y ago
    Very well said. This, and the EU's encouraging the fascist overthrow of the democratically elected Ukrainian president has made me strongly opposed to the current form of European 'Union'.
- toyg 12y ago
  Erdogan, in practice, gave up EU membership a long time ago. He initially used that mirage as a wedge to remove old power structures... and then replaced them with his own Islamist versions. In the last 5 years, I don't think EU membership for Turkey has ever been seriously brought up in mainstream debate (in Europe, at least). Erdogan is just a tinpot dictator of the Islamic variety, but he seems to be happy to keep in NATO a country that is absolutely critical for NATO operations in the Middle-East, so we keep pretending he's just a "conservative-minded" democratic leader. Unless Europe is happy to give Putin's supporters more ammunition for "double standard" arguments, it's time to call a spade a spade.
  - sentenza 12y ago
    In all fairness, many EU leaders are scared shitless of Turkey. It is not so much that they have something against Islam (well, at least most of them), but they are acutely aware that Turkish society might blow up once the power of the military is reduced to a sufficient degree. Nobody knew what exactly could/would trigger chaos in Turkey, but there are many candidates: The Kurdish question, the post-Kemalistic resurgence of Islam, the Alevites... I sincerely hope that these expectations were to pessimistic. If Turkey could somehow "capture" all its societal tensions within the framework of a stable parlamentary system, we (both Turkey and the EU) could greatly benefit from Turkish accession.
    - stevoo 12y ago
      i disagree with EU leaders scared of Turkey. They just want Turkey to behave more like a civilized country as Turkey is the bridge between Europe and the rest of the Muslim world. But with the way they are acting, they are not really helping out much. All the scandals left and right, the Kurdish and still holding under military occupation half of an EU country ( Cyprus ) then that is not how a democratic country should rule.
    - mercurial 12y ago
      > In all fairness, many EU leaders are scared shitless of Turkey. It is not so much that they have something against Islam (well, at least most of them) If they aren't, many of their voters are, and the question of the demographic weight of Turkey is a real one, considering how awkward the political aspect of the EU already is. Not to mention that I can't imagine many politicians fighting to share a border with Syria at the moment.
- tripzilch 12y ago
  > I am surprised, because normally you hear "social media ban" and you think some dictatorship. One thing is certain, while this is going on, Turkey can kiss EU membership ambitions goodbye. If only it was that easy. Dutch ISPs were forced to censor The Pirate Bay, but we're still in the EU! (j/k)
ayi 12y ago
As a Turk, i'm just ashamed of our government. Schools in Turkey teaches in geography classes that Turkey is a bridge between Asia and Europe. But this is also true for our social structure: We sometimes turn our face to europe, ass to asia and sometimes we turn our ass to europe and face to middle east. Our last 12 years was a sample for second statement. (by the way, i'm sorry for my english skills)
- shmerl 12y ago
  How big do you think is a percentage of those who oppose such censorship in Turkey?
  - ayi 12y ago
    Government (and their partisan supporters such as some journalists, representatives) support their decision with the same old "think about children" argument. For example this man in the video is the Minister of Transport, Maritime and Communication. He is the reponsible minister for internet in Turkey. Today some journalists asked him his opinions about Twitter ban and he responded "i will answer your question with another question. tell me what would you feel if someone opens a news twitter account with your wife's full name and shared photoshopped pics?". (http://www.cnnturk.com/video/turkiye/ulastirma-bakani-elvanin-twitter-sorusu-gazetecileri-kizdirdi http://www.cnnturk.com/video/turkiye/ulastirma-bakani-elvani...) Well, for your question: A lot of people saw that the ship is sinking and leaved it. The only people still supports erdogan are some business men who has some contracts with government, erdogan's inner circle and their base supporters who are mostly not well educated and don't have internet connection. So, at least 40% of our country is against his censorship.
  - theverse 12y ago
    Apparently Erdogan only receives support from more rural and religious communities which is probably still more than 30% of the country.
    - ayi 12y ago
      He has got 15 million registered members for his party. mostly men not having any higher-education, minimum-wage government contract based workers. This way they feel like they are a part of a some bigger movement.
higherpurpose 12y ago
Good thing Tor exists: http://www.dailydot.com/technology/turkey-twitter-ban-tor-usage/ http://www.dailydot.com/technology/turkey-twitter-ban-tor-us...
- Cuuugi 12y ago
  VPN's or other DNS server's would work better.
  - jeffisabelle 12y ago
    twitter's IP block also blocked, so other dns servers dont work either. VPNs are quite OK now.
    - cturhan 12y ago
      Good news is you can change hosts file
  - ChrisAntaki 12y ago
    VPN's definitely help. There's an effort now to purchase them for journalists in Turkey: https://unblockturkey.fightforthefuture.org/fight-censorship-and-spying-in-turkey https://unblockturkey.fightforthefuture.org/fight-censorship...
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diorray 12y ago
From Turkish Medical Association's press release: “There is the interest lobby behind Gezi Park protests.” “They had alcohol in Dolmabahçe Mosque.” “They assaulted my sisters covering their hair.” As physicians we are following with worry the discriminating, stigmatizing and polarizing discourse adopted by Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan since Gezi Park protests. We were actually appalled hearing what he said yesterday in Gaziantep about Berkin Elvan. Normally, no one would try to bring two families both losing their child in confrontation. Normally, no one would declare as “terrorist” a 15 years old child shot by police while out for buying a loaf of bread and lost his life after 269 days of struggle for survival. Normally, no one would slant playing marbles as if they were cannonballs to fire. Normally, no one would provoke a rally crowd to protest a mother who lost her child only two days ago. We are physicians. We know about to many psychological and emotional states of human beings. We are worried about the emotional state of Prime Minister Erdoğan. We are utterly worried. Indeed worried about himself, his close circles and our country. And we share our worries with public.
Jemaclus 12y ago
This will end well.
cturhan 12y ago
Kaddafi could stand 30 days after he banned twitter and Husnu Mubarek could stand 18 days after his prohibition. Now it's time for Erdogan!
- camus2 12y ago
  Strange ,no reaction from Obama on this one... ;)
  - ihsw 12y ago
    Not strange at all. Turkey is in an interesting position of being quite comfortable with the US, Russia, and the Middle East, and China. The only major world power that Turkey is not in good graces with is the EU. Turkey is also a massive nation in a very militarily strategic location -- if it were to destabilize then things would get ugly very quickly. With Libya and Syria in such recent memory, toppling a government is no longer appealing at all.
  - johansch 12y ago
    http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-switch/wp/2014/03/21/the-white-house-is-deeply-concerned-about-turkeys-twitter-ban/ http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-switch/wp/2014/03/21...
  - deleted 12y ago
    [deleted]
_cbb1 12y ago
IIRC google dns is banned in North Korea. :)
- valarauca1 12y ago
  And China, sort of. 8.8.8.8 is blocked in mainland china, but 8.8.4.4 is not.
  - btw0 12y ago
    Not sure where you are in China, but 8.8.8.8 is not blocked for me here in Beijing and everywhere I visited - Shanghai & Hubei province.
biesnecker 12y ago
It's cute to watch an sliding-into-autocracy government trying to implement internet censorship without the infrastructure. Mr. Erdogan, call Cisco, see if you can get a discount on the China Package.
- makmanalp 12y ago
  The scary part is that with the recent restructuring of the internet law, the new telecommunications communications directorate (TIB, yeah kinda redundant) is supposed to be starting deep packet inspection, which is rumored to be the reason why the internet has been slower recently ...
enscr 12y ago
Time is ripe for a P2P real-time people-network. Outside first world, Twitter has been playing a pivotal role in helping people counter oppressive regimes & lack of democracy. But this may not continue for long. Edit: Ripe = not just for making it but adopting it as well.
- jcbrand 12y ago
  > Time is ripe for a P2P real-time people-network http://twister.net.co http://twister.net.co
  - enscr 12y ago
    Looks cool, Hopefully more people pick it up. Does it have much traction with any particular demographics?
rasur 12y ago
I see a vision of the future... where Turkey plays "whack-a-mole" with the worlds DNS..
vegustui 12y ago
Internet access is a privilege, not a right, just like driving a car /s
- prht 12y ago
  That would be correct we were living in 1990s. Today blocking access to social network can be interpreted as direct violation of right to communicate.
jrochkind1 12y ago
Wait, how did simple access to google DNS circumvent their twitter ban? They had blocked twitter... merely by removing it from some DNS servers that they thought were the only ones used by people in Turkey? Or something? That seems like a particularly ineffectual way to try and block twitter. And I don't understand, if they have the ability to _actually_ block Google DNS... why don't they just do the same thing to actually block twitter? This makes no sense, I must be missing something. Anyone have the scoop?
- MichaelGG 12y ago
  Probably because blocking Google DNS is 2 just IPs? If you can "force" most people to use your own DNS, it's far easier to implement blocking via DNS. Otherwise, you're left playing whackamole if a company adds new frontend machines.
  - jrochkind1 12y ago
    Except there are an indefinite number of other DNS servers, free and with a contract, that Turkish users could use too, from an indefinite number of different vendors. It's a heck of a lot harder to block "any DNS server that isn't under Turkish government control" than it is to block twitter. We can all speculate, but really I was hoping that someone had some additional information, perhaps because they are in Turkey, on what's going on exactly. (Is it too much to expect discussion of technical details on HN, instead of political bickering? On anything involving Turkey, anywhere on the internet, yeah, it probably is. The reason why I'm curious about technical details is, of course, because I have an interest in knowing how to circumvent and help people circumvent whatever censors are up to these days).
    - vacri 12y ago
      I imagine that if you wanted to block all DNS queries not going to government DNS, you put a block on packets routing to port 53. This is going to hit a lot of businesses that use their own DNS systems though. It would be harder to do a wide-ranging-but-not-total block, methinks, but I am not a net admin; I don't know the feasibility of mass port blocking.
siculars 12y ago
Ah, the slippery slope. What's next? 8.8.8.8, 8.8.4.4, or has that been done already. Hey everybody in the world, this is how dictators stop free speech and tighten control on their people. Technologists need to think about these things going forward in all the work we do.
- Kerrick 12y ago
  Blocking 8.8.8.8 and 8.8.4.4, Google's public DNS servers, is exactly what this article is about.
afsina 12y ago
Actually title should have been "Turkey has blocked Google DNS to access Twitter". Because Google DNS is working fine for other sites.
Eleutheria 12y ago
If the government shuts down the internet keep calm and shut down the government
- r00fus 12y ago
  Nice turn of phrase, but I hope you do realize that this is being attempted, and has been for quite a while now. Easier said than done.
eurleif 12y ago
I have a site that receives >200k daily uniques from Turkey. I feel like I should put something up to tell my Turkish users about how to get around their government's Internet blocking, but I'm not sure exactly what to put up. Is there a link for this specific purpose? Should I just give them a link to Tor?
- hershel 12y ago
  I think hola.org would be a good recommendation - it's a free p2p proxy service. I used it to watch hulu and it worked quite well with a simple UI.
  - voltagex_ 12y ago
    Is hola really a p2p proxy? I thought it just inserted a proxy.pac into Firefox/Chrome to do whatever it wanted with your web browser. Either way, it might be good for watching streaming video, but I wouldn't trust it somewhere that Twitter is blocked.
    - hershel 12y ago
      You can use hola against cencorship.From reading a bit around the web, it seems that most of the time it does work in china, the country with the most advanced censorship tech.
- ayberk 12y ago
  Tunnelbear is providing free Giant Tunnelbear package for people from Turkey[1]. It is easy enough to use and gets the job done perfectly. [1]:https://twitter.com/theTunnelBear/status/446776207367864320 https://twitter.com/theTunnelBear/status/446776207367864320
- voltagex_ 12y ago
  If you can afford the bandwidth, put up a mirror of the Tor executables and also consider becoming a Tor bridge.
  - 12y ago
pg 12y ago
I wonder if disconnecting people from the Internet is enough to bring down the government. Has that happened anywhere yet?
- nowarninglabel 12y ago
  I think this is a good read on why digital censorship was a catalyst in Egypt's government transition, though certainly not enough to take much of the credit for it: http://abolitionistpaper.wordpress.com/2012/08/29/networking-rebellion-digital-policing-and-revolt-in-the-arab-uprisings/ http://abolitionistpaper.wordpress.com/2012/08/29/networking...
- deleted 12y ago
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- rz2k 12y ago
  Iran quashed its spring revolt, but Mubarak didn't. I think parallel to purported policy goals and idealologies, any ruler or single administration lives to see the next day from a combination of institutions and patronage stacks. Those details probably matter more than a sudden attempt to kill the internet in deciding a regime's fate, though it's certainly not a sign of strength. A regime with enough support can wipe out thousands or millions of people, and a single well-publicized massacre or act of outright corruption can precipitate a complete loss of legitimacy. In Egypt, you could say controlling the population through grain subsidies is a double edged sword if there's ever an interruption in the supply. The tribesmen on camel proved to be a pretty weak constituency contrasted with the military as an Egyptian institution with allegiances to the population at large, and a senior leadership that ultimately would resume power without its former figurehead. Nominally, it was mass grass roots protests that overthrew the Muslim Brotherhood, which wasn't owed credit for the overthrow of Mubarak anyway, but "we'll do you the favor of carrying out a coup if you put x many people in Tahrir square," is much more like a behind the scenes coalition between interest groups than an embrace of democratic principles. That the groups still had the institution of the military to carry it all out, then quietly implement more effective controls on dissent, meant that the revolution might as well never have occurred, as long as your name isn't Mubarak and there are no more shortages in food. In Iran, it was more of a challenge to decouple the regime from a specific scapegoat without undermining its legitimacy. Maybe it is less resilient if any flaws or corruption are openly acknowledged. And yet, there is probably a lot of national solidarity and pride implicit with the revolution (1979) and the war with Iraq. Not only were there more thugs, and they were on motorcycles rather than camels, but the Revolutionary Guard is probably both a patron of the regime and an institution that is respected and gets significant, automatic respect on its own. It may simply have been that the more dynamic classes of society simply didn't have the real power necessary to upset the status quo regardless of restrictions on internet or filming of abuses. In Turkey, the last decade has seen the very steady dismantling of the military as an institutional check on government. I don't think this is the same as 'proactive' governments dismantling institutions like an independent judiciary, a free press, or erosion of conventions on privacy and freedoms from surveillance that you see in places like Pakistan and the United States. The mechanisms for a military veto are almost always extralegal, and no matter how meritocratic advancement within the officer corps is, it's fundamentally anti-democratic. And yet, what has he done with consolidation of power around a more unitary executive? Instead of fostering the growth of more legitimate institutions that would ultimately strengthen the country and cut down on corruption, he seems to have focused on his own patronage stack, whether that involves cashing in public space, or squashing opponents. There is some irony that the allegations against him many very well be as trumped up as some of those against former military leadership, but possibly, equally in service of the ultimate public good. All that said, ineffective attempts to shut down communication probably cause much less harm than making a bigger show of firing artillery into Syria or shooting down jets to gin up nationalist fervor. Anyway, that's my hamfisted attempt at a background for coming up with a 21st century theory on revolutions, probably rife with inaccurate characterizations. So maybe restrictions on the internet can impact general prosperity in ways that rob regimes of their legitimacy, and they're definitely not a sign of strength. However, we can be pretty irascible on issues of liberty, and yet we're pretty slow countering threats to the free flow of information, or the creation of new tools for cronyism.
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allochthon 12y ago
“Twitter has knelt down [before the Turkish government]. [We are a] nation in love with its independence. And [enhancing] this is what Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has done. We are no banana republic.” Wait, what?
thret 12y ago
"We are no banana republic. And by no means are we a pineapple republic. We are a complete fruit salad."

299 points by _ks3e 12y ago

Wow, Turkey is really going nuts. I am surprised, because normally you hear "social media ban" and you think some dictatorship. One thing is certain, while this is going on, Turkey can kiss EU membership ambitions goodbye.

kaonashi 12y ago
>Turkey can kiss EU membership ambitions goodbye. Probably all the better for Turkey.
- s_dev 12y ago
  I doubt that. Turkey would be better off in the EU as would Ukraine or at least the popular opinions of common people would suggest. Turkey is in NATO so it's a completely different ball park to Ukraine. They would be better off economically and culturally. Europe is more harmonious than the the other spheres of influence surrounding Turkey namely the Middle East and Russia.
  - enraged_camel 12y ago
    Nope, not the case. The Turkish economy is very strong, and the workforce is young and energetic. If Turkey joined the EU, the aging European population and the crumbling economies of Greece, Italy and Spain would be a drag on the growth of the Turkish economy. Essentially, the only major benefit EU membership would give Turks is the ability to freely travel around Europe without needing passport visas.
    - mkuhn 12y ago
      And maybe free access to a huge market to sell all the goods your growing economy produces to!?
    - Ygg2 12y ago
      While workforce being young and energetic is helpful, it's not the sole reason of someone's economy being strong. I'm pretty sure most African countries have way younger population. It's not like Turks already don't go to Germany to work.
    - binarycrusader 12y ago
      The Turkish economy isn't going to remain strong if they keep doing stupid things like this. The free flow of information is vital to the growth and sustaining of an economy.
      - enraged_camel 12y ago
        That's actually our greatest hope. If foreign investment dries up as a result of political instability, enough people might stop voting for him that he might be outed in a semi-democratic process (if he doesn't rig the elections as usual, that is). Otherwise, things will end in violence.
      - pknerd 12y ago
        Really? What do you say about China?
        oblio 12y ago
        When you have 1.5 billion people the game is played at an entirely different level. One which Turkey is highly unlikely to reach.
        stevoo 12y ago
        and have every single kind of mineral deposit in the world, with some that are only mined there. China is on a completely different level as oblio already said :)
      - theverse 12y ago
        I think Erdogan sees China as a model for the future, as a provider of cheap labor. So, Turkey doesn't need to intellectually integrate with the rest of the world.
    - weavejester 12y ago
      There's a big difference between being able to travel to a country without a visa, and being able to freely emigrate there, which is what EU membership provides. Turkey's economy may be growing, but the GDP per capita is a quarter that of wealthier countries like the UK or Germany. Joining the EU would also give Turkey a seat at the table. Turkey has a large population, and would therefore get a large representation at the European Parliament.
  - kaonashi 12y ago
    > They would be better off economically Considering the experience of Spain, Italy, Portugal, Italy, etc. in the EU thus far, I highly doubt that conclusion.
    - s_dev 12y ago
      Those experiences are commonly attributed to the EMU not the EU.
    - mercurial 12y ago
      Are you contending that the EU did not have a huge positive influence on the Spanish economy from the time it joined the EU until the economic crisis? The fact that the Spanish government, much like the Irish, let a bubble form, isn't, as far as I know, the fault of the EU. I agree that the current policy of austerity is an extremely bitter pill to swallow, but seeing the influence of the EU on the southernmost member states only in light of recent events is mistaken. Of course, it is possible that you simply dislike market economy, but that's a very different debate.
      - kaonashi 12y ago
        Here's an excellent run-down of the inherent flaws in the EU institutional arrangements. http://www.lrb.co.uk/v14/n19/wynne-godley/maastricht-and-all-that http://www.lrb.co.uk/v14/n19/wynne-godley/maastricht-and-all... tl;dr everyone can't be a net exporter at the same time
- seanccox 12y ago
  I tend to agree. Though the carrot of EU membership has been instrumental in motivating a few, minor reforms, mostly it just becomes a distracting process (for both parties). It was the dream of Ataturk that Turkey be a European nation, but it doesn't seem particularly plausible now.
josefresco 12y ago
Hopefully because Turkey is "democratic" they'll simply vote out the idiots who made such short-sighted decisions.
- egeozcan 12y ago
  Democracy is not pluralism but people with enough money/connections can keep abusing the ignorance of the masses on any subject to gain so much power that they stop caring about the minorities. My political knowledge is very limited so I wonder what kind of measures exist in modern democracies to fight that? Is it just a matter of education? And, what happens when education becomes just another tool for propaganda?
pjc50 12y ago
Exactly how democratic it is is very much in question: http://www.opendemocracy.net/arab-awakening/halil-gurhanli/can-turkey-handle-free-and-fair-elections http://www.opendemocracy.net/arab-awakening/halil-gurhanli/c... It's a good example of how pluralism is a more important aspect of democracy than the actual voting. People like to complain about the US two-party system and condemn obvious one-party states, but the reality of a lot of recent or fragile democracies is that they are one-and-a-bit party states. There's an establishment and an opposition, and the opposition are allowed to exist but have a limited influence on actual control.
- redthrowaway 12y ago
  For an example of this, look at how the ANC has dominated South African governance for the last 20 years, and the cost that's had in terms of corruption and development of civil society.
- saraid216 12y ago
  I wonder whether or not it'd do any good to enshrine opposition factions in a government. I have a vague notion of requiring budgetary support, but I can't really imagine any specifics I'd be happy with. AFAIK, opposition parties (and political parties in general) haven't been included in any constitutions at all. #thoughtexperiment #whimsy
hospes 12y ago
I think Turkey has a lot more complex issues before they can be seriously considered as a EU candidate: - Occupation of Cyprus (EU member state) populated mostly by Greeks (Greece is EU member as well) (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turkish_invasion_of_Cyprus http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turkish_invasion_of_Cyprus) - Armenian Genocide of 1915. 1.5 million Armenians were killed by Turkish government, because of being Christians. 21 Countries and 43 U.S. states have recognized the Armenian Genocide. Turkey denies the Armenian Genocide. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Armenian_Genocide http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Armenian_Genocide) They constantly suppress rights of Kurds.
- egeozcan 12y ago
  Yes, no other European country has any similar issues. Greece should close its borders immediately to prevent us barbarians from entering the EU again! Seriously, I agree that Turkey needs to do a lot to rise up to the European standards but I don't think it helps the conversation to bring these sensitive issues up every time you see the words EU and Turkey in the same sentence. edit: Dear down-voters, I understand your sensitivity on the issue but please try to understand what I'm arguing against. I actually accept the Armenian Genocide, and support Kurdish rights, and the rights of any other minorities. What I'm arguing against is this continuous flame-war. See my other comments on those issues if you challenge my honesty. Thanks.
  - mercurial 12y ago
    Many other countries had or still have difficulty coming to terms with their past: France until relatively recently with its colonial past, the UK (or so it seems seen from continental Europe), Japan with its numerous warcrimes during WWII, Algeria, or even the US. I can understand why repetitive, double-standard bashing would become tedious after a short while.
  - stevoo 12y ago
    The problem with this sensitive issues is that they are still un-resolved. Unfortunately your goverment does not want to do anything about them and keep on doing what they fucking want. When Erdogan steps down, and hopefully a more civilized, non-military person takes over then nothing will change. In the mean time, Kurds are still gonna suffer, Cyprus will still be divide in half, and everything else that they keep on doing.
gioele 12y ago
> Turkey can kiss EU membership ambitions goodbye. Why? Single EU countries have widespread censoring infrastructure in place and IP-based bans are common and normal. They are just not at stupid to ban hi-profile sites yet. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_censorship_in_Germany http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_censorship_in_Germany http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_censorship_in_France http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_censorship_in_France http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_censorship_in_Italy#Internet_censorship http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_censorship_in_Italy#In... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_censorship_in_Denmark http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_censorship_in_Denmark http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_censorship_in_the_Republic_of_Ireland http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_censorship_in_the_Repu... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_censorship_in_the_United_Kingdom http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_censorship_in_the_Unit... Please note the common pattern of the justifications: censorship starts often with "terrorism/children abuse/pornography", then covers "counterfeit goods/media", finally "libel/hate speech".
- tootie 12y ago
  Those are almost cases of illegal content being blocked or removed. Classified information, copyright violations. No one is having opinions or new repressed. Turkey is proactively silencing dissent that has no other channel. PM Erdogan was caught red-handed taking bribes and it seems the Turkish MSM is already intimidated into quiescence and now they try to block whole sections of the internet to hide the truth.
  - pg_is_a_butt 12y ago
    in america, we call "taking bribes", "working with lobbyists"... corruption all the way down. feel free to complain all you want. it doesn't stop.
  - yk 12y ago
    Turkey is also just blocking "illegal content."
- thisiswrong 12y ago
  Very well said. This, and the EU's encouraging the fascist overthrow of the democratically elected Ukrainian president has made me strongly opposed to the current form of European 'Union'.
toyg 12y ago
Erdogan, in practice, gave up EU membership a long time ago. He initially used that mirage as a wedge to remove old power structures... and then replaced them with his own Islamist versions. In the last 5 years, I don't think EU membership for Turkey has ever been seriously brought up in mainstream debate (in Europe, at least). Erdogan is just a tinpot dictator of the Islamic variety, but he seems to be happy to keep in NATO a country that is absolutely critical for NATO operations in the Middle-East, so we keep pretending he's just a "conservative-minded" democratic leader. Unless Europe is happy to give Putin's supporters more ammunition for "double standard" arguments, it's time to call a spade a spade.
- sentenza 12y ago
  In all fairness, many EU leaders are scared shitless of Turkey. It is not so much that they have something against Islam (well, at least most of them), but they are acutely aware that Turkish society might blow up once the power of the military is reduced to a sufficient degree. Nobody knew what exactly could/would trigger chaos in Turkey, but there are many candidates: The Kurdish question, the post-Kemalistic resurgence of Islam, the Alevites... I sincerely hope that these expectations were to pessimistic. If Turkey could somehow "capture" all its societal tensions within the framework of a stable parlamentary system, we (both Turkey and the EU) could greatly benefit from Turkish accession.
  - stevoo 12y ago
    i disagree with EU leaders scared of Turkey. They just want Turkey to behave more like a civilized country as Turkey is the bridge between Europe and the rest of the Muslim world. But with the way they are acting, they are not really helping out much. All the scandals left and right, the Kurdish and still holding under military occupation half of an EU country ( Cyprus ) then that is not how a democratic country should rule.
  - mercurial 12y ago
    > In all fairness, many EU leaders are scared shitless of Turkey. It is not so much that they have something against Islam (well, at least most of them) If they aren't, many of their voters are, and the question of the demographic weight of Turkey is a real one, considering how awkward the political aspect of the EU already is. Not to mention that I can't imagine many politicians fighting to share a border with Syria at the moment.
tripzilch 12y ago
> I am surprised, because normally you hear "social media ban" and you think some dictatorship. One thing is certain, while this is going on, Turkey can kiss EU membership ambitions goodbye. If only it was that easy. Dutch ISPs were forced to censor The Pirate Bay, but we're still in the EU! (j/k)

ayi 12y ago

As a Turk, i'm just ashamed of our government. Schools in Turkey teaches in geography classes that Turkey is a bridge between Asia and Europe. But this is also true for our social structure: We sometimes turn our face to europe, ass to asia and sometimes we turn our ass to europe and face to middle east. Our last 12 years was a sample for second statement. (by the way, i'm sorry for my english skills)

shmerl 12y ago
How big do you think is a percentage of those who oppose such censorship in Turkey?
- ayi 12y ago
  Government (and their partisan supporters such as some journalists, representatives) support their decision with the same old "think about children" argument. For example this man in the video is the Minister of Transport, Maritime and Communication. He is the reponsible minister for internet in Turkey. Today some journalists asked him his opinions about Twitter ban and he responded "i will answer your question with another question. tell me what would you feel if someone opens a news twitter account with your wife's full name and shared photoshopped pics?". (http://www.cnnturk.com/video/turkiye/ulastirma-bakani-elvanin-twitter-sorusu-gazetecileri-kizdirdi http://www.cnnturk.com/video/turkiye/ulastirma-bakani-elvani...) Well, for your question: A lot of people saw that the ship is sinking and leaved it. The only people still supports erdogan are some business men who has some contracts with government, erdogan's inner circle and their base supporters who are mostly not well educated and don't have internet connection. So, at least 40% of our country is against his censorship.
- theverse 12y ago
  Apparently Erdogan only receives support from more rural and religious communities which is probably still more than 30% of the country.
  - ayi 12y ago
    He has got 15 million registered members for his party. mostly men not having any higher-education, minimum-wage government contract based workers. This way they feel like they are a part of a some bigger movement.

higherpurpose 12y ago

Good thing Tor exists: http://www.dailydot.com/technology/turkey-twitter-ban-tor-usage/ http://www.dailydot.com/technology/turkey-twitter-ban-tor-us...

Cuuugi 12y ago
VPN's or other DNS server's would work better.
- jeffisabelle 12y ago
  twitter's IP block also blocked, so other dns servers dont work either. VPNs are quite OK now.
  - cturhan 12y ago
    Good news is you can change hosts file
- ChrisAntaki 12y ago
  VPN's definitely help. There's an effort now to purchase them for journalists in Turkey: https://unblockturkey.fightforthefuture.org/fight-censorship-and-spying-in-turkey https://unblockturkey.fightforthefuture.org/fight-censorship...

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diorray 12y ago

From Turkish Medical Association's press release: “There is the interest lobby behind Gezi Park protests.” “They had alcohol in Dolmabahçe Mosque.” “They assaulted my sisters covering their hair.” As physicians we are following with worry the discriminating, stigmatizing and polarizing discourse adopted by Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan since Gezi Park protests. We were actually appalled hearing what he said yesterday in Gaziantep about Berkin Elvan. Normally, no one would try to bring two families both losing their child in confrontation. Normally, no one would declare as “terrorist” a 15 years old child shot by police while out for buying a loaf of bread and lost his life after 269 days of struggle for survival. Normally, no one would slant playing marbles as if they were cannonballs to fire. Normally, no one would provoke a rally crowd to protest a mother who lost her child only two days ago. We are physicians. We know about to many psychological and emotional states of human beings. We are worried about the emotional state of Prime Minister Erdoğan. We are utterly worried. Indeed worried about himself, his close circles and our country. And we share our worries with public.

Jemaclus 12y ago

This will end well.

cturhan 12y ago

Kaddafi could stand 30 days after he banned twitter and Husnu Mubarek could stand 18 days after his prohibition. Now it's time for Erdogan!

camus2 12y ago
Strange ,no reaction from Obama on this one... ;)
- ihsw 12y ago
  Not strange at all. Turkey is in an interesting position of being quite comfortable with the US, Russia, and the Middle East, and China. The only major world power that Turkey is not in good graces with is the EU. Turkey is also a massive nation in a very militarily strategic location -- if it were to destabilize then things would get ugly very quickly. With Libya and Syria in such recent memory, toppling a government is no longer appealing at all.
- johansch 12y ago
  http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-switch/wp/2014/03/21/the-white-house-is-deeply-concerned-about-turkeys-twitter-ban/ http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-switch/wp/2014/03/21...
- deleted 12y ago
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_cbb1 12y ago

IIRC google dns is banned in North Korea. :)

valarauca1 12y ago
And China, sort of. 8.8.8.8 is blocked in mainland china, but 8.8.4.4 is not.
- btw0 12y ago
  Not sure where you are in China, but 8.8.8.8 is not blocked for me here in Beijing and everywhere I visited - Shanghai & Hubei province.

biesnecker 12y ago

It's cute to watch an sliding-into-autocracy government trying to implement internet censorship without the infrastructure. Mr. Erdogan, call Cisco, see if you can get a discount on the China Package.

makmanalp 12y ago
The scary part is that with the recent restructuring of the internet law, the new telecommunications communications directorate (TIB, yeah kinda redundant) is supposed to be starting deep packet inspection, which is rumored to be the reason why the internet has been slower recently ...

enscr 12y ago

Time is ripe for a P2P real-time people-network. Outside first world, Twitter has been playing a pivotal role in helping people counter oppressive regimes & lack of democracy. But this may not continue for long. Edit: Ripe = not just for making it but adopting it as well.

jcbrand 12y ago
> Time is ripe for a P2P real-time people-network http://twister.net.co http://twister.net.co
- enscr 12y ago
  Looks cool, Hopefully more people pick it up. Does it have much traction with any particular demographics?

rasur 12y ago

I see a vision of the future... where Turkey plays "whack-a-mole" with the worlds DNS..

vegustui 12y ago

Internet access is a privilege, not a right, just like driving a car /s

prht 12y ago
That would be correct we were living in 1990s. Today blocking access to social network can be interpreted as direct violation of right to communicate.

jrochkind1 12y ago

Wait, how did simple access to google DNS circumvent their twitter ban? They had blocked twitter... merely by removing it from some DNS servers that they thought were the only ones used by people in Turkey? Or something? That seems like a particularly ineffectual way to try and block twitter. And I don't understand, if they have the ability to _actually_ block Google DNS... why don't they just do the same thing to actually block twitter? This makes no sense, I must be missing something. Anyone have the scoop?

MichaelGG 12y ago
Probably because blocking Google DNS is 2 just IPs? If you can "force" most people to use your own DNS, it's far easier to implement blocking via DNS. Otherwise, you're left playing whackamole if a company adds new frontend machines.
- jrochkind1 12y ago
  Except there are an indefinite number of other DNS servers, free and with a contract, that Turkish users could use too, from an indefinite number of different vendors. It's a heck of a lot harder to block "any DNS server that isn't under Turkish government control" than it is to block twitter. We can all speculate, but really I was hoping that someone had some additional information, perhaps because they are in Turkey, on what's going on exactly. (Is it too much to expect discussion of technical details on HN, instead of political bickering? On anything involving Turkey, anywhere on the internet, yeah, it probably is. The reason why I'm curious about technical details is, of course, because I have an interest in knowing how to circumvent and help people circumvent whatever censors are up to these days).
  - vacri 12y ago
    I imagine that if you wanted to block all DNS queries not going to government DNS, you put a block on packets routing to port 53. This is going to hit a lot of businesses that use their own DNS systems though. It would be harder to do a wide-ranging-but-not-total block, methinks, but I am not a net admin; I don't know the feasibility of mass port blocking.

siculars 12y ago

Ah, the slippery slope. What's next? 8.8.8.8, 8.8.4.4, or has that been done already. Hey everybody in the world, this is how dictators stop free speech and tighten control on their people. Technologists need to think about these things going forward in all the work we do.

Kerrick 12y ago
Blocking 8.8.8.8 and 8.8.4.4, Google's public DNS servers, is exactly what this article is about.

afsina 12y ago

Actually title should have been "Turkey has blocked Google DNS to access Twitter". Because Google DNS is working fine for other sites.

Eleutheria 12y ago

If the government shuts down the internet keep calm and shut down the government

r00fus 12y ago
Nice turn of phrase, but I hope you do realize that this is being attempted, and has been for quite a while now. Easier said than done.

eurleif 12y ago

I have a site that receives >200k daily uniques from Turkey. I feel like I should put something up to tell my Turkish users about how to get around their government's Internet blocking, but I'm not sure exactly what to put up. Is there a link for this specific purpose? Should I just give them a link to Tor?

hershel 12y ago
I think hola.org would be a good recommendation - it's a free p2p proxy service. I used it to watch hulu and it worked quite well with a simple UI.
- voltagex_ 12y ago
  Is hola really a p2p proxy? I thought it just inserted a proxy.pac into Firefox/Chrome to do whatever it wanted with your web browser. Either way, it might be good for watching streaming video, but I wouldn't trust it somewhere that Twitter is blocked.
  - hershel 12y ago
    You can use hola against cencorship.From reading a bit around the web, it seems that most of the time it does work in china, the country with the most advanced censorship tech.
ayberk 12y ago
Tunnelbear is providing free Giant Tunnelbear package for people from Turkey[1]. It is easy enough to use and gets the job done perfectly. [1]:https://twitter.com/theTunnelBear/status/446776207367864320 https://twitter.com/theTunnelBear/status/446776207367864320
voltagex_ 12y ago
If you can afford the bandwidth, put up a mirror of the Tor executables and also consider becoming a Tor bridge.
- 12y ago

pg 12y ago

I wonder if disconnecting people from the Internet is enough to bring down the government. Has that happened anywhere yet?

nowarninglabel 12y ago
I think this is a good read on why digital censorship was a catalyst in Egypt's government transition, though certainly not enough to take much of the credit for it: http://abolitionistpaper.wordpress.com/2012/08/29/networking-rebellion-digital-policing-and-revolt-in-the-arab-uprisings/ http://abolitionistpaper.wordpress.com/2012/08/29/networking...
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rz2k 12y ago
Iran quashed its spring revolt, but Mubarak didn't. I think parallel to purported policy goals and idealologies, any ruler or single administration lives to see the next day from a combination of institutions and patronage stacks. Those details probably matter more than a sudden attempt to kill the internet in deciding a regime's fate, though it's certainly not a sign of strength. A regime with enough support can wipe out thousands or millions of people, and a single well-publicized massacre or act of outright corruption can precipitate a complete loss of legitimacy. In Egypt, you could say controlling the population through grain subsidies is a double edged sword if there's ever an interruption in the supply. The tribesmen on camel proved to be a pretty weak constituency contrasted with the military as an Egyptian institution with allegiances to the population at large, and a senior leadership that ultimately would resume power without its former figurehead. Nominally, it was mass grass roots protests that overthrew the Muslim Brotherhood, which wasn't owed credit for the overthrow of Mubarak anyway, but "we'll do you the favor of carrying out a coup if you put x many people in Tahrir square," is much more like a behind the scenes coalition between interest groups than an embrace of democratic principles. That the groups still had the institution of the military to carry it all out, then quietly implement more effective controls on dissent, meant that the revolution might as well never have occurred, as long as your name isn't Mubarak and there are no more shortages in food. In Iran, it was more of a challenge to decouple the regime from a specific scapegoat without undermining its legitimacy. Maybe it is less resilient if any flaws or corruption are openly acknowledged. And yet, there is probably a lot of national solidarity and pride implicit with the revolution (1979) and the war with Iraq. Not only were there more thugs, and they were on motorcycles rather than camels, but the Revolutionary Guard is probably both a patron of the regime and an institution that is respected and gets significant, automatic respect on its own. It may simply have been that the more dynamic classes of society simply didn't have the real power necessary to upset the status quo regardless of restrictions on internet or filming of abuses. In Turkey, the last decade has seen the very steady dismantling of the military as an institutional check on government. I don't think this is the same as 'proactive' governments dismantling institutions like an independent judiciary, a free press, or erosion of conventions on privacy and freedoms from surveillance that you see in places like Pakistan and the United States. The mechanisms for a military veto are almost always extralegal, and no matter how meritocratic advancement within the officer corps is, it's fundamentally anti-democratic. And yet, what has he done with consolidation of power around a more unitary executive? Instead of fostering the growth of more legitimate institutions that would ultimately strengthen the country and cut down on corruption, he seems to have focused on his own patronage stack, whether that involves cashing in public space, or squashing opponents. There is some irony that the allegations against him many very well be as trumped up as some of those against former military leadership, but possibly, equally in service of the ultimate public good. All that said, ineffective attempts to shut down communication probably cause much less harm than making a bigger show of firing artillery into Syria or shooting down jets to gin up nationalist fervor. Anyway, that's my hamfisted attempt at a background for coming up with a 21st century theory on revolutions, probably rife with inaccurate characterizations. So maybe restrictions on the internet can impact general prosperity in ways that rob regimes of their legitimacy, and they're definitely not a sign of strength. However, we can be pretty irascible on issues of liberty, and yet we're pretty slow countering threats to the free flow of information, or the creation of new tools for cronyism.

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allochthon 12y ago

“Twitter has knelt down [before the Turkish government]. [We are a] nation in love with its independence. And [enhancing] this is what Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has done. We are no banana republic.” Wait, what?

thret 12y ago

"We are no banana republic. And by no means are we a pineapple republic. We are a complete fruit salad."