# Turkey blocks access to Wikipedia

Date: 2017

Turkey blocked access to Wikipedia in April 2017. The restriction remained in place for more than two years before the Constitutional Court ruled on 26 December 2019 that the block violated freedom of expression. The Wikimedia Foundation, which had challenged the measure, described the decision as unconstitutional and later reported restoration of access. The dated fact stays anchored to the beginning of the nationwide block, while the later judgment supplies authoritative evidence about the rights impact of that restriction. A nationwide block differs from removal of a single unlawful page because it prevents users from reaching the entire reference platform, including material unrelated to the government’s original objections. The block therefore cut users off from a major information resource as a whole. The record does not claim that Wikipedia content is uniformly reliable or that governments lack authority to contest unlawful material; the relevant mechanism is the blanket access restriction and the constitutional finding that followed it.

## People

- Recep Tayyip Erdoğan: https://factrail.ai/people/recep-tayyip-erdogan

## Drivers

- Digital Censorship: https://factrail.ai/drivers/digital-censorship

## Sources

- https://www.anayasa.gov.tr/en/news/individual-application/press-release-concerning-the-judgment-finding-a-violation-of-the-freedom-of-expression-due-to-blocking-of-access-to-wikipedia/
- https://wikimediafoundation.org/news/2019/12/26/turkish-constitutional-court-rules-that-the-two-and-a-half-year-block-of-wikipedia-is-unconstitutional/

## Methodology

https://factrail.ai/methodology

Canonical: https://factrail.ai/facts/tr-wikipedia-block-2017