Turkey Lets YouTube Out of the Penalty Box

Turks can now, once again, access YouTube after a two-day court-ordered blocking of the site.  Here's the AP story.  And, TechDirt says this. 

Best insight and explanation for all of this comes from someone who used to work in the broadcast industry in Turkey and presciently commented to a BoingBoing post on the ban before it was rescinded...

I lived and worked in the broadcast industry in Istanbul about 10 years ago, and as far-out as this kind of thing seems to us Americans, it's really not that uncommon over there at all. It's essentially the equivalent of the government making the "offender" sit in the corner and write out their "crime" on the chalkboard of their medium ad infinitum during their time-out period.

It's questionable if the application of this is truly about insulting the pervasive Ataturk cult of personality - believe me, Turks can hang with us New Yorkers in the daily insult department - or something else. For instance, while I was there a popular primetime TV sitcom made what was very obviously a tame joke about an unmarried middle-aged woman in the government (far less worse than anything you'd hear any day on US TV or talk radio about, say, Janet Reno). If memory serves correctly, the next day the entire network was similarly kneecapped for about three days, broadcasting the "insulting Turkishness" message for the duration. I heard about other sporadic incidents since then, again over stuff that's considered mundane and trivial back here.

I wouldn't be surprised at all if this isn't more of a pre-emptive move to keep the tempers of the more nationlistic from boiling over about the whole Greek thing, which as we know has been going on for decades (and really, really needs to stop - I had a front row seat to an ugly border crossing incident between the two that was completely uncalled for, again over nothing). Will be very interesting to see how long this one goes for and how it's ultimately resolved...