Turkey is a favorite target for the Anonymous hactivist collective due to the anti-censorship skein running through their tapestry of political activism. The country has been caught up in numerous problems involving suppression of dissent, cutting off the Internet to its citizens in the name of “protecting them”, and other obviously oppressive information withholding behaviors. As a result, they’ve primed a bull’s-eye on themselves for the sort of mayhem that those flying the Anonymous banner.

Recently, in the legacy of LulzSec, a faction of Anonymous trampled over 74 Turkish websites defacing them with their logo, and released data from over 100 websites in Turkey. All this as part of “Turkish Takedown Thursday,” explains the AnonOps Communication blog, an extension of the #AntiSec operation began by now-disbanded LulzSec in June:

The hacks released are part of a “Turkish Takedown Thursday” action planned by the group. Its Antisec program, started in June with the now disbanded hacker group LulzSec, targets governments, law enforcement, and corporations.
Turks took to the streets in May to protest against the new filtering scheme, which plans to introduce four levels of filtering – family, children, domestic, or standard – for Internet users by August 22. While protestors describe the rules as mandatory, the government has said they are optional filters for the protection of families.

Among the 100 websites that had information stripped from them and placed onto torrents, a multitude of them are Turkish government sites.

Protests over the new Internet filters took place in May. Government officials claimed to reporters that they introduced the technology due to requests for better Internet safety. They went on to explain that current filters and technology simply didn’t work that well—and also that the current scheme included a “standard” filter for those who didn’t want their Internet experience to change. Why they didn’t just call it “no filtering” is potentially a Freudian slip lowering the blinds just enough to understand the real motivations behind this so-called filter, which would probably be more or less another invocation of the Great Firewall of China.

“These filters would turn the Internet into a state-controlled area,” said Serkan Dogan, 29, an Istanbul software programmer told the Wall Street Journal at the time of the protests. “You’d enter a channel leading you to the server of the state, which distributes the Internet to millions of users. The system enables the control of citizens…like telephone tapping.”

Now subclaves of Anonymous have taken their DDoS and hacking skills into the fray and have begun to disrupt and lay bare as many Turkish government sites as possible as the date of the eventual filter implementation approaches: August. Turkey has responded by making broad sweeps of suspected Anonymous members, arresting 32 persons last month thought to be involved in the attacks.

Other countries that have taken actions against the activity of Anonymous cells—and don’t be mistaken: Anonymous is not a traditional group; it’s a collective of individuals and hacker cells who decide to take part in operations named and suggested as memes—recently has been Italy, whose authorities triggered numerous raids netting a few more arrests.

Looking at the reaction of the #AntiSec community and Anonymous in general, the activity of authorities is only generating a rise in animosity against the activity of governments and will probably drive further involvement in politically motivated hacks. Anonymous and other hacktivist groups are the modern day equivalent of political guerrilla graffiti and pamphleteering taken to a predatory level.