Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan addresses the lawmakers of his Justice and Development Party at the parliament in Ankara, Turkey on June 26, 2012.

Image: Burhan Ozbilici/Associated Press

A local court ordered Turkey to lift its ban on YouTube on Friday, just one day after the government finally unblocked Twitter following another court ruling.

The Court of Peace in Ankara’s Gölbaşı district ruled that a blanket ban on YouTube is too broad and violates Turks’ human rights, citing the Constitutional Court ruling that led to lift of the Twitter ban. The Ankara court, however, also ruled that 15 videos must remain blocked, according to various news reports.

The Turkish government blocked access to YouTube on March 27 after alleged recordings were posted to the video-sharing site of of a top-level government meeting that discussed potential military options against Syria.

It remains unclear whether Turkey’s government will follow this ruling and unblock YouTube.

On March 26, a local court ordered the government to lift the ban on Twitter, but it took an additional ruling, one by the Constitutional Court, for the country’s government to follow through and unblock the microblogging platform.

The most recent saga of censorship in Turkey started on March 20, when Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan pledged to “eradicate” Twitter and blocked access to it. Nevertheless, Turks found ways to circumvent the block, using Virtual Private Networks (VPN) and the anonymizing tool Tor, which saw an exponential growth.

Turkish netizens sent 1.2 million tweets the day following the Twitter block, setting a new record for the country.