By Sophie PILGRIM (text)<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/11\/hebdo-hack-400.jpg\" "\\"hebdo-hack-400\\"")
Hours after its offices were fire-bombed on Wednesday, the website of French weekly, Charlie Hebdo, came under attack from the Turkish hackers\u2019 group Akincilar. \u201cYou keep abusing Islam\u2019s almighty Prophet with disgusting and disgraceful cartoons using excuses of freedom of speech,\u201d read the message left on the site. \u201cWe will be your curse on cyber world!\u201d<\/p>\n
On Sunday, French newspaper Journal du Dimanche printed an interview with one of the Akincilar members who claims to have carried out the attack. Calling himself only Ekber, the 20-year-old IT student said the group targeted the website after finding out about the \u201cCharia Hebdo\u201d edition of the magazine, which featured an illustration of the Prophet Mohammed on its front page.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe didn\u2019t do anything wrong,\u201d he said. \u201cIt\u2019s not like we siphoned off bank accounts. This was a protest against an insult to our values and beliefs.\u201d Ekber stressed that while the website had been made temporarily unavailable to its readers, none of its data would be lost or altered.<\/p>\n
He also denounced the arson attack on the magazine\u2019s Paris offices, which were completely destroyed after a Molotov cocktail was thrown through the window in the early hours of Wednesday morning. \u201cOf course we do not support violence,\u201d he told the paper. \u201cIslam is a religion of peace.\u201d<\/p>\n
According to the journalist who carried out the interview, the mystery hacker turned up to the secret meeting in jeans and a black shirt. \u201cNot quite the profile of the Taliban drawn by Cabu [the cartoonist who drew Mohammed for the \u2018Charia Hebdo\u2019 edition], he joked.<\/p>\n
Ekber told him he was a fan of the Turkish Prime Minister Erdogan and a critic of the separatist Kurdistan Workers\u2019 Party, whose sympathisers have also found their websites hacked in the past.<\/p>\n
Akincilar, which is named after an Ottoman Empire warrior, is thought to have hacked some 6,000 websites in the past few years, including that of Turkey\u2019s own Charlie Hebdo, \u2018The Penguin\u2019, after it published a cartoon of a man on a mobile phone in a mosque.<\/p>\n
It has also targeted sites it labels \u201cpornographic or satanic\u201d, along with a myriad of American, Israeli, and Armenian addresses whose politics it deems offensive. \u201cWe defend our country and our institutions,\u201d says Ekber.<\/p>\n
Left-wing daily ‘Lib\u00e9ration’ up next<\/p>\n
While the Akincilar hackers succeeded in getting their message across regarding Charlie Hebdo\u2019s editorial policies, the magazine\u2019s website has yet to be re-instated, after the Belgian company that hosts it received death threats.<\/p>\n
Charlie Hebdo was also suspended from Facebook (albeit temporarily), after a deluge of complaints led to a warning from the powers that be over the \u201cinappropriate\u201d picture of the Prophet Mohammed.<\/p>\n
Charlie Hebdo attack: Extremist firebombers, 0 \u2013 Satirical weekly, 1<\/p>\n
The magazine has meanwhile set up a blog, updating readers with the latest developments on its \u201chomeless\u201d activities. Away from the cyber world, Charlie Hebdo has become more popular than ever, with this week\u2019s edition selling out in under 24 hours, forcing it to print an extra 175,000 copies on top of the usual 100,000.<\/p>\n
A demonstration in Paris on Sunday attracted hundreds of supporters, including some famous French faces, \u201cin defence of the right to blaspheme\u201d. Organised by the anti-xenophobia organisation SOS Racisme, the impromptu movement aims to fight \u201creligious fundamentalism\u201d and preserve democracy and secularism.<\/p>\n
While the police continue their investigation into the fire, which they have classified as a terrorist attack, the magazine itself has been housed by newspaper Lib\u00e9ration, which is one of a number of publications that reprinted the Mohammed cartoon in support of Charlie Hebdo.<\/p>\n
But the left-wing daily faces the same fate as its adopted magazine. \u201cIf Lib\u00e9ration continues publishing those cartoons, then we\u2019ll have to deal with them as well\u201d said Ekber.<\/p>\n
via Charlie Hebdo hacker says he \u2018did nothing wrong\u2019 – FRANCE – TURKEY – FRANCE 24.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A 20-year-old Turkish IT student who says he hacked into the Charlie Hebdo website hours after its offices were fire-bombed Wednesday, sat down to coffee with a French journalist in Istanbul later to explain why he \u201cdidn\u2019t do anything wrong\u201d. By Sophie PILGRIM (text) Hours after its offices were fire-bombed on Wednesday, the website of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":83,"featured_media":46516,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[48],"tags":[1575],"class_list":["post-46514","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-france","tag-turkish-hackers"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46514","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/83"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=46514"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46514\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/46516"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=46514"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=46514"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=46514"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}