Turkey has blocked access to Wikipedia.org for at least 12 hours in a crackdown on free speech, the BBC reports.
Closely following Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s latest power grab — the controversial referendum victory Trump more or less endorsed — the country cut off access to Wikipedia over accusations that the site was “running a smear campaign against Turkey in the international arena” and “supporting terror.”
Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales rebuffed Turkey’s request to remove certain articles from the online encyclopedia on Twitter, saying “access to information is a fundamental human right.”
Turkey has a lengthy history of silencing dissent: In recent years, the country has repeatedly censored social networks, including Twitter and YouTube in 2014 and Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube in 2016. Turkey also attempted to cut off access to Minecraft in 2015.
