A Kurdish delegation met with Richard Allan, Facebook's Policy Director for Europe and Middle East, to share worries about Facebook's continuing and seemingly escalating perceived censorship of Kurds and Kurdish content on Facebook.

The delegation was made up of Mark Campbell, Kurdish rights activist, Özlem Galip, Kurdish journalist and academic, Seyitxan Sansur, IT Consultant and social media expert, Dr Cengiz Güneş, writer and expert on Kurdish issues, Derya Bayır, practising lawyer and expert on International Human Rights Law and Padraig Reidy, Journalist and Editor of Index on Censorship who attended as an observer.

The delegation represented the BDP (Peace and Democracy Party) and Yeni Özgür Politika as well as the thousands of Kurdish voices who had signed the petition against censorship of Kurdish content by Facebook.

Speaking to ANF about the meeting, Kurdish rights activist Mark Campbell from the Kurdish Community Centre in London said that “In fact, despite the weak protestations and pathetic defences of "Our hands are tied" or "We have to follow European and Turkish Laws in relation to 'support of terrorism'" and "We have judgments against us sometimes from Turkish courts that we have to comply with under Turkish laws!" the main atmosphere of the meeting was one of trying to defend the indefensible and failing miserably.”

Campbell underlined that Richard Allan denied Facebook categorically working as Turkey's agent and specifically targeting Kurds for censorship, saying Allan stated that Facebook did not have a specific blanket policy targeting Kurdish content but that his company had to work within the laws of the countries they operated in and referred to terrorism legislation.

“Allan explained that their policy on 'violations' of Facebook's codes were not actively pursued by Facebook but that their policy was that they only viewed content that was actively 'reported' to them for violations”, said Campbell and noted that Richard thought that maybe because there is the 'heightened political atmosphere' in Turkey that this could be the reason that were more reports against Kurdish content.

According to Campbell, Facebook agreed with them on the negative perception that is being portrayed but vehemently defended their staff who they said were 'only doing their jobs' and not motivated by Turkish nationalism.

Campbell said Facebook seemed to be very uncomfortable and almost 'ashamed' with the present situation, and that Allan acknowledged that it does not 'look good' and hinted that there may well be a review of Facebook's policy in regard to Kurdish content as the political situation changes in Turkey.

One day after the meeting, the biggest networking Facebook page for Kurds and Kurdish supporters in Australia, PROUDLY MADE IN KURDISTAN with a following of 10,500, was shut down by Facebook for 'consistently violating Facebook's rules'.

Facebook has closed a number of pages in recent months including that of Yeni Özgür Politika, BDP, BDP co-chair Selahattin Demirtaş and deputies Sırrı Süreyya Önder, Altan Tan, Ahmet Türk, Hasip Kaplan, Leyla Zana, Ayla Akat and Diyarbakır Mayor Osman Baydemir as well as Bijwen-Kürt, Ötekilerin Postası, Irkçılığa ve Savaşa Dur De Girişimi, Kurdi Müzik.