Turkey’s ‘resistance media’ refuses to buckle
A Turkish oppositional news site seeks recognition in the Guinness Book of World Records after 61 bans and as many reopenings.
ANKARA, Turkey — Sendika.org is a popular news site in Turkey, carrying news that the mainstream media often shun, wary of angering the government. However, due to a series of government-imposed bans, a website with this name no longer exists online. Readers gifted with a good memory are now going to the sendika62.org address, but it, too, may change soon.
The website’s name-changing saga began in 2015, when the now-defunct Telecommunication and Communication Authority (TIB), a body attached to the prime minister’s office, issued its first order blocking access to the site. This led to the inauguration of sendika1.org, but it didn't survive for long. Since then, the site has been gagged and revived 61 times, as the number in its current address suggests. Launched in late August, sendika62.org’s “longevity” has surprised the staff. “We have not been shut down for three weeks. This is truly intriguing,” the site’s editor-in-chief, Ali Ergin Demirhan, told Al-Monitor Sept. 17.
