Internet Censorship in Turkey

A 2016 report on Freedom on the Net found that Turkey frequently raids its own mobile and Internet connection hubs and has blocked Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube on multiple occasions. It has restricted as much as 90% of domestic Twitter traffic. A 14-day cyber attack took nearly 400,000 Turkish websites offline.

The VPN Workaround

The safest and most effective way to get past Turkey’s Internet censorship of Imgur and other similar sites is by using a virtual private network (VPN). A VPN can emulate a connection from outside of your home region, allowing you to gain access to websites that are geoblocked. Here’s how it works: Say you’re a graphic designer living in Turkey who uses Imgur for inspiration for your work as well as static images. When the Turkish government banned Imgur, you lost the ability to source images. To combat this loss, you invest in a VPN that you can safely download in Turkey without being reported. Once you’ve established a new connection with the VPN client, you can pick a server located outside Turkey to connect to. When the connection is secure, open a new web browse and head to Imgur’s website. When you hit return, your computer won’t try to connect to Imgur, but will encrypt that request and send it through a private ‘tunnel’ that connects your computer to the remote server. At the remote end, your encrypted request is decoded and sent on to the Internet, attached to a new IP address representative of the country you have connected to.

The ‘tunnel’ is the imperative difference between the VPN and a simple proxy server. With a proxy, there is no security and your ISP or a watchdog agency could see what you are sending and to whom. This is not the case in the VPN. The security tunnel keeps out those prying eyes, which can be essential in a country like Turkey where breaking the country’s censorship laws can compe at a steep price.

Picking the Best VPN

Not all VPNs are created equal. Two of the best to employ when taking on Turkey’s block of Imgur are PrivateVPN, and SaferVPN.

1Private VPN

Private VPN comes in handy when you’re looking out for yourself security wise. Its support team is top drawer and its pricing is fair and balanced. Get it Now

2SaferVPN

SaferVPN is great when you’re first getting into the world of VPNs. It is simple to use without too many bells and whistles to distract you. Get it Now