This is the same type of control that is put on journalists and writers by way of Article 301 of the Turkish Constitution which restricts anyone from saying anything that the government deems "offensive to Turkishness". In an ever totalitarian Turkish state the people are slowly losing what little freedom they once had. Proof of this is the attempted imprisonment of Orhan Pamuk, a Nobel Winner in Literature, when he dared mention the Armenian Genocide to a journalist. Pamuk now lives in exile. There are countless others journalists and writers who have been persecuted for talking about the killing of millions of Christian Armenians (Armenian Genocide) during WWI, the Dersim Massacre of the Kurds in the late 30's among other Turkish atrocities.
The West must persuade Turkey to stop its repressive behavior on its own people and on the Greek island of Cyprus, which is partially occupies.

There's no proof that the projects will be used for surveillance so I don't pay any importance to speculation. Especially in a secular country in EU accession process it's absurd to think that it's being done for religious reasons and Big Brother state.

However on a more important note:

Amazing how little effort it takes to attract the Turcophobes. Starting from comment #1 we have one of them almost instantly. He outlined every single Turcophobe talking point irrelevantly on the subject of issuing e-mail addresses to citizens and creating a search engine.

Jack Haroutun or whatever your real name is , there is no Greek island of Cyprus, as there is no Dutch country of Belgium. Why is so hard for you to accept the existence of the sizable Turkish minority? What part of saving the Turkish minority from Greek terror and a racist coup don't you understand? Should we have abandoned them so the Greeks would kill them all like Nikos Sampson said he would? What makes you think endless cyber propaganda against Turkey will change anything? Greece and Cyprus are getting more and more irrelevant every day and Turkey is gaining more and more power every day, don't you see you are only laughable? Don't you see that current Turkish government is the most moderate one about Cyprus issue? Don't you ever read about the ongoing talks where one of the possible results is the independence of North Cyprus and international recognition of it? Don't you ever read the Greek newspaper of Cyprus Mail? Or are you just here to spread propaganda spam?

Stop treating others like morons. We are not the Ottoman government, we are not the 30s fascist government. The current government is actively trying to mend the fences with the neighbors and reach out to its Kurdish minority with reforms. The people you should be against are not the current government but the secularist-nationalist state establishment consisting of media, army and the judiciary. Why do you keep spreading butter to their slice of bread by playing the anti-Turk foreigner?

And read the opinions of the man before using him to support your agenda.

http://www.euronews.net/2009/11/28/turkey-has-place-in-a-europe-of-liberte-egalite-and-fraternite-says-pamuk/

Mr. Morozov's article, as usual, is concise and to the point. The system that is being proposed certainly smacks of big-brotherism, but I am also surprised by the knee-jerk Anti-Turkish commentators, who seem to be the same ones from the other articles on Turkey.

Most countries censor search engines and the internet and most of them like China and Saudi Arabia are constantly working to find new ways to restrict access to online content and yes it is wrong. I think that state players, Turkey included, should stay out of the internet censoring business, after all if you see something you don't like on the internet you can not click on that site again, or better yet leave a snarky comment for the online offender.

Using Article 301 as a knee-jerk excuse to attack anything done by Turkey is sloppy and intellectually dishonest at best. Most Americans don't realize that recently President Obama signed a law that congress passed to give the United States government the power to have absolute control over the internet and media in the case of a 'national emergency'.

All nations have foolish, unethical and restrictive laws and Turkey is no different than any other nation in that respect. Let's not single any one state out for attack, let's be honest here.

The turkish nation is big, progressing fast, manages quite a few competent managers and engineers - but it can't possibly keep up with this arms race. Turkey is an authoritarian state - authoritarian states like these can still play catchup with the west in a few key areas, but not in all of them.

Right now they invented their own perimetered email system - by the time children born now will reach adulthood they'll have to consult the equivalent wiki of the mid 2020s to garner a clue what that @ emblazoned archaic code means - it used to be a victorian contraption called 'e-mail'. By then these kids will be using something completely new and the turkish autocrats will have been scrambling to catch up ever since.

I am not accusing turkey of being a thirdworld, backward, reactionary state - they may be so, but that is beside the point. I am accusing them of being small, even with 76 million people. Not even Germany could keep up if it wanted to, with a fullblown domestic internet alternative better than what is produced by a few billion developers. The e-world too fast-evolving, and by far too diffuse to contain. By the time it's up and running, it'll be another whale oil lamp.

Without being judgemental of the values of the turking faux-democratic military dictatorship (I don't have to live in their dystopia)the turkish may be stubborn, or obstinate or in denial about the nature of technological change. This is a complete global transformation we can't even see the end of. What's called 'internet' today is rapidly overtaking every aspect of existence. In fact - we in the non-authoritarian world may be just as ill-equipped as the turkish leadesrship for what is emerging around us.

So I gladly label them not in 'turcophobe' terms - I'd rather think they are the rear garde of futurophobes, because I am pretty sure they are not being particularly smart about this.

I am a Turkish citizen and I can tell you that the Turkish state is at most an authoritarian wanna-be. This "Anaposta" project will not allow the state to pry into citizens' affairs as long as the state does not try to ban Gmail or Hotmail. Turks who value their privacy will use Gmail and others who do not care about their privacy may or may not use Anaposta.

Turkish state is ignorant about the internet and the national state's ability to control it. 2 examples: 4 years ago the Parliament enacted a law that requires each website (including blogs and user-content like Facebook) to submit 2 paper copies of their content everyday to the municipality. Imagine the amount of paper they would receive if people complied even for one day. People did not comply.

A second example is the current ban on Youtube. Turkish state bans access to Youtube b/c of a slanderous video about Ataturk. Of course the law is effective only in Turkey which means that only the Turkish people cannot see that one video on Youtube. But Turkish people already adore Ataturk so why "protect" them? The absurdity is clear. Now everyone in Turkey uses "tunnel sites" like Ktunnel to freely access anything banned by the state. Last summer even the Turkish PM admitted that he "can access Youtube and everybody else also can".

So, don't worry too much about this new web service. It is not a good sign but it is not a big deal b/c it will not have a big effect.

Why not just tatto a serial number, or implant an RFI under their skin? An ID with an email address? I'm sorry, Obama used the word, so I'm using it, Are you RETARDED? You're worried about Google, so instead you give all of our personal information to a gov't that doesn't trust you to choose what to read for yourself? Wow, I hope this catches on so the US can hack into it and keep track of all the terrorist activity. As a programmer, I sometimes worry that other countries might pass the US in the computer industry. With gov'ts like this, the US will definitely stay in control of high technology; since we have the most unrestricted flow of information, leading to ideas and innovation that move the world forward. What's strange is that to 'improve' the search process, they're removing results they find 'inappropriate', yet google does not bias which results appear (except adverts of course). An algorithm decides, but in Turkey they want to hand pick what you will see, so they can make that the 'truth'. Well, Turkey, when the gov't decides to ban your webpage, we'll still let you bring it to an American server. Even if what you say isn't true, that's okay. Here in America, we welcome a challenge to popular ideas. About the YouTube ban: See the Iraq gov'ts new youtube channel, those Arabs will show you how to use it.