The ruling comes as a win for free speech advocates in a country whose government is widely accused of increasingly eroding citizens' democratic rights.
lifted its more than two-and-a-half year block on Wikipedia on Thursday, after the country's top constitutional court ruled the ban unconstitutional.
"We are thrilled to be reunited with the people of Turkey," Katherine Maher, executive director of the Wikimedia Foundation,Thursday as the online encyclopedia celebrated its 19th year in existence. "We are excited to share this important moment with our Turkish contributor community on behalf of knowledge-seekers everywhere."
Wikipedia was blocked in Turkey in April of 2017, after an English language page on the volunteer-powered site linked Turkey to support for terrorist groups including Al Qaeda and IS. Turkey's government, led by President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, enacted the ban by citing a law that enabled it to block access to websites deemed threatening to national security, public order or public well-being.
"Instead of coordinating against terrorism, it has become part of an information source which is running a smear campaign against Turkey in the international arena," Turkey's communications ministry said of Wikipedia in a statement at the time of the ban, which applied to the entire website and all its different language pages, not just those in English.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan attends a news conference in Budapest, Hungary, November 7, 2019., noted many countries' accusations of Turkey as sponsoring Islamist rebel groups in Syria like Al Nursa front, which is Al Qaeda's Syrian affiliate. Former Vice President Joe Biden in 2014 accused Turkey of being among a group of countries "pour hundreds of millions of dollars and tens of thousands of tons of weapons into anyone who would fight against Al-Assad.
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