Turkish anti-censorship group Turkey Blocks is reporting that Dropbox, GitHub, Google Drive and Microsoft OneDrive are being blocked in Turkey.
Access to the services was blocked on Saturday following the leak of private emails reportedly belonging to minister of energy and natural resources Berat Albayrak.
According to Turkey Blocks, Github, Dropbox, and Google Drive are issuing SSL errors, which indicates interception of traffic at the national or ISP level.
The emails leaked are 17GB of files containing some 57,623 stolen emails dating from April 2000 to September this year. A court in Turkey confirmed (linked text in Turkish) the authenticity of the leak.
The leak is reported to have come from a hacktivist group known as RedHack. According to Wikipedia, “RedHack is a Turkish communist computer hacker group founded in 1997. The group has claimed responsibility for hacking institutions which include the Council of Higher Education, Turkish police forces, the Turkish Army and Türk Telekom.”
The group are no strangers to controversy: the personal details of almost 50 million Turkish citizens, including the country's President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, were posted online a few months ago.
According to Turkey Blocks, these digital service are being blocked in an attempt to hamper distribution of the stolen emails and to stop the email from being hosted on citizen-owned accounts.
The emails are feared to reveal a widespread campaign of propaganda and deception throughout Turkish government.
Turkey Blocks said that Google Drive had already been unblocked on Sunday, while other services are still unavailable in the country.
Turkey is no stranger to this sort of censorship – in March 2014 Twitter was banned in Turkey after an audio clip was leaked on YouTube and Twitter about the alleged corrupt dealings of Turkey's prime minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.
The clips reportedly reveal the prime minister instructing his son to dispose of large amounts of cash in the midst of a police investigation.
