Please vote to renounce the Ataturk Ultimatum. I will provide a link to what it is:
http://wiki.erepubli...aturk_Ultimatum
For those that don't know what it is, the Turks threatened to go through legal actions to ban the game in Turkey if the administration of the game did not punish players who speak truthfully about Mustafa Kemal or insult him. Keep in mind that no other nation in erepublik has this favoritism shown to them... The administration of erepublik, gave in, and agreed that they will start to punish anyone who speaks against so called "insulting turkishness".
What is insulting turkishness?
In Turkey, there is a law called Article 301. It allows the Turkish government to jail and oppress peoples free speech, for talking about anything that is considered insulting to Turks. Note that this also includes historical accurate reportings and histories that go against the governments agendas. That means that the Turkish state can actually jail their own citizens for merely discussing history that has been agreed by the global academic community as real historical facts. In addition to this, there are over 20 more laws and regulations that have similar effect to Article 301. Much of Europe uses this as an example of Turkeys oppression of free speech, and a major block for entrance into the EU. This includes the Turkish government denying the Armenian Genocide. Denying the Armenian Genocide has faced legislation in France to criminalize the act of denying the historical reality of the Armenian Genocide. Germany has laws against denying the Holocaust. As can be seen, in the EU, denying genocides is equivalent to continuing those genocides. As can be seen, the EU strongly condemns this type of behavior.
Erepublik protecting Turkish Law?
The most perplexing thing about this is the strange situation. The Romanian government in general doesn't seem to have any harsh or strong anti-Armenian or anti-Hellenic sentiment. Hence a company operated out of Romanian shouldn't have any such anti-Armenian or anti-Hellenic sentiment. In addition, the government of Romania doesn't necessarily have over friendly ties with Turkey or Azerbaijan or particularly any other Turkish state in Asia. Hence again, no natural reason for this from a company based out of Romania. Strangely, only the Turks get this special treatment from the erepublik company. It is odd, why this nationality alone would get such unique privileges over players of different nationalities? It is interesting that a company that benefits out of doing business in an EU state, at the same time violates EU principles for a state that is outside of the Eurozone, and continues to be blocked access to the EU based on severe, multiple, and frequent human rights violations, including everything from genocide, ethnic cleansing, oppression of minorities, religious freedom oppression, free speech oppression, and honour killings. Even more odd and perplexing is that the erepbulik administration claims to sponsor free speech as a law of the new world, yet queerly supports an EU condemned Turkish law that oppresses free speech.
PLEASE SIGN NOW!
If you agree that the erepublik administration should treat all players of all nationalities fairly on erepublik(not giving special benefits to one nationality over another) and not support a policy that limits free speech(which should be a core of this game and the newspaper system on it), then sign this article!
