Ankara, Turkey
A Turkish court has cut off the country’s access to Wordpress.com, one of the largest blog hosters in the world. The ban is a result of a lawsuit by Turkish millionaire Adnan Oktar, who claimed that blogs hosted by the San Francisco–based site had libeled him. Oktar, a Holocaust denier and prominent Muslim creationist, publishes religious books under the pen name Harun Yahya. He attracted international criticism this year when he sent his 770-page book, The Atlas of Creation, to schools and museums across the U.S. and Europe. Wordpress hosts more than 1 million blogs that get 12 million page-views a month in Turkey. Turkish bloggers have begun moving their blogs to other sites.
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