Five days after Turkey’s highest court ruled to lift the two-month YouTube ban, the authorities have restored access to the video sharing site.
Last week, the country’s highest court lifted the ban stating blocking Google’s YouTube violates freedom of expression and the service was ordered to be restored.
Turkish authorities reportedly received the ruling on Tuesday. An official at Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan’s office told Reuters, “As the Constitutional Court verdict was received today, YouTube will be open to access later today.”
Google confirmed the news saying “Turkish traffic to YouTube was rising.” A spokesman for the company said “We are glad that YouTube has been restored in Turkey following our successful appeal to the courts.”
Back in March, the government banned YouTube after a leak of an audio recording of senior military officials discussing security issues and a possible military intervention in Syria. Since the ban was imposed, Turkish authorities have been defying orders from lower courts and continued to block the video sharing site.
The YouTube ban along with the similar ban on the micro blogging site Twitter led to large scale international criticisms of the Turkish Government. In the case of Twitter, after Prime Minister Erdogan threatened to “rip out the roots” in the wake of a corruption scandal reported through news, images, and videos posted on the site, embarrassing the government. Turkish authorities blocked access to the site. The block on Twitter was lifted in April.
