Reddit blocks Turkey under the Internet Censorship law

In Turkey, under the country’s Internet censorship law 5651, the home page of the internet aka Reddit has been blocked. He law says that  the government is allowed to ban sites that has pirated content, has pornographic content or is critical of the first President Mustafa Ataturk.

The Telecom Authority of Turkey (TIB) has officially confirmed the ban with a statement “After technical analysis and legal consideration based on the Law Nr. 5651, ADMINISTRATION MEASURE has been taken for this website (reddit.com) according to Decision Nr. 490.05.01.2015.-252804 dated 13/11/2015 of the Presidency of Telecommunication and Communication.”

The Internet Law 5651 was passed back in 2007 and it has been misused to ban other sites such as Twitter as well as YouTube in the past. But both these bans were overturned by the Turkish courts, but there is no logic or reasoning given as to why certain sites are banned. In case of Reddit, the presence of NSFW threads on the site could possibly be a reason, but the authorities have not outright stated that in its statement.

According to many users online, the ban seems to be on the DNS level and can be circumvented by  using a foreign DNS service such as the Google Public DNS.