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Turkish Government Agency Declares Minecraft Should Be Banned

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When we reported that Turkey’s Family and Social Policies Ministry was looking into complaints that Minecraft was too violent and encouraged violence against women, we assumed they’d check it out, see that it’s harmless and everyone would move on with their lives.

We were wrong.

In fact, the ministry has declared that Minecraft should be banned in Turkey, and has made that recommendation to the government.

The ministry declared that “Although the game can be seen as encouraging creativity in children by letting them build houses, farmlands and bridges, mobs [hostile creatures] must be killed in order to protect these structures. In short, the game is based on violence,” according to a Turkish paper.

The report concludes that children might not be able to separate this fantasy violence from reality and might begin torturing animals. And that the game might lead to “social isolation” and expose children to online abuse and bullying. They apparently did not find that the game encouraged violence against women, primarily because finding mobs in Minecraft that can be described as “women” with a straight face is kind of a stretch.

The legal process to ban Minecraft has begun and it’s in the hands of the Turkish Courts. And it might happen.
Turkey is not above banning content the government disagrees with, more than 67,000 websites are banned there, the paper says.

About Shawn Hopkins

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