Turkey unbans YouTube

A court in Turkey has overturned the banning of YouTube in the country for insulting "Turkishness" and the founder of the modern Republic of Turkey, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk.

After the video was removed from YouTube the court lifted the ban and the state telecoms company Turk Telecom immediately reinstated the site late on Friday.

In Turkey it is illegal to insult Ataturk, who set the country on a reforming course towards becoming a secular Western democracy. The military has previously been the watchdog of Ataturk's legacy, but since applying to join the European Union Turkey has improved its human rights record and decreased the power of the military in civilian affairs. Never the less, the civilian courts have maintained the idea of insulting Turkishness as a crime against the state.

The move was criticized within Turkey by some opinion writers for the amount of international press this story garnered for the country.