Turkey blocks access to Wikipedia

Turkey yesterday blocked all access inside the country to the online encyclopedia Wikipedia, the communications agency said, in the latest restriction on a popular website to hit Turkish users.

Turkey's Information and Communication Technologies Authority (BTK) said it had implemented the ban on wikipedia.org but the reason for the move was not immediately clear.

A block affecting all language editions of the website in Turkey was detected from 0500 GMT after an administrative order by the Turkish authorities, the Turkey Blocks monitoring group, which watches internet restrictions in the country, said in a statement.

Residents in Istanbul were unable to access any pages of Wikipedia without using a Virtual Private Network (VPN), AFP correspondents said.

No reason was given for the order to block Wikipedia. Other websites, including leading social media, appeared to be working normally.

Turkey has become notorious over the last years for temporarily blocking access to popular sites, including Facebook and Twitter, in the wake of major events such as mass protests or terror attacks.

Savvy internet users frequently resort to the use of VPNs to get around these bans although there have been complaints that the use of VPNs has now also started to be blocked.

The government says such measures are always temporary and needed for national security but critics see them as another restriction on civil liberties under President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.