YouTube and Spotify have been accused of “censorship” after the Turkish government blocked videos and songs by the left-wing folk band Grup Yorum.
According to Turkish freedom of expression organisation IFOD, Turkish authorities blocked access to more than 450 videos by Grup Yorum on YouTube last week in the name of “protecting national security and public order”.
They said the 454 clips, shared since 2006 by dozens of YouTube accounts, had totalled more than 205 million views.
IFOD said in a statement on Friday that at least one of the group’s albums had also been blocked on Spotify and Apple Music. A similar request was put to streaming site Deezer, but they refused to comply.
Legislation passed in 2022 handed the government’s Information and Communication Technologies Authority (BTK) powers to compel social media companies to comply with requests to take down content and hand over user data or to be subject to reduction of their bandwidth.
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Outlets such as X (formerly Twitter) have blocked scores of accounts in Turkey in recent months at the request of the government, mainly leftists and oppositions figures.
‘Perception of complicity’
Yaman Akdeniz, founder of IFOD, told Middle East Eye that social media platforms had been facing renewed pressure following the outcry over the arrest of Istanbul mayor Ekrem Imamoglu in March.
“They all face substantial fines as well as threats of throttling of their services. So, at first sight, it may seem understandable that they all comply,” he said.
‘Their silence regarding the blocking of Grup Yorum’s songs and albums suggests a reluctance to challenge or even acknowledge the censorship’
– Yaman Akdeniz, IFOD
“However, their silence regarding the geographical blocking of Grup Yorum’s songs and albums suggests a reluctance to publicly challenge or even acknowledge the censorship. The lack of transparency and official announcements from these platforms exacerbates the perception of complicity.”
Middle East Eye contacted YouTube’s owner Google and Spotify for comment, but neither had responded at time of publication.
Since their founding in 1985, Grup Yorum’s songs have touched on a wide range of progressive causes, including lauding socialist icons such Deniz Gezmis – a Marxist revolutionary hanged in 1968, criticising the killing of 15-year old Berkin Elvan by police in 2014, gentrification, imperialism, women’s rights, the struggle for Kurdish rights, and covering famous leftist anthems such as Bella Ciao and the Internationale.
In response to the blocking of their songs, Grup Yorum announced on Monday that they were giving away their entire discography for free, posting a link on their social media feed.
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On Tuesday, they called for a three-day boycott of the platforms.
“We are not dependent on these monopolized platforms,” they wrote on X.
“They are trying to erase Grup Yorum, who have been singing the people’s folk songs for 40 years, from everywhere. They will not succeed!”
The group have long been accused by the government of association with the Revolutionary People’s Liberation Party/Front (DHKP-C), an armed Marxist-Leninist group responsible for carrying out numerous attacks on government officials and foreign officials in Turkey and abroad.
The band’s line-up changes regularly, with members frequently spending time in and out of prison or fleeing abroad.
In 2020, singer and bassist Ibrahim Gokcek died after an almost year-long “death fast” protesting the ban on the band’s concerts and the imprisonment of a number of band members.
