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Turkey passed an internet censorship law in 2007 with the declared objective of protecting families and minors (Akdeniz, 2010). It established a unit within the regulator BTK (Information and Communication Technologies Authority) responsible for imposing bans and blocks on websites based on nine catalogue crimes defined by other national laws (Akgül 2008(Akgül , 2009a(Akgül , 2009b. As of May 2015, 80,000 websites were banned based on civil code related complaints and intellectual property rights violations, reports the independent website Engelliweb. Blocking decisions rendered by penal courts are enforced even when they are based on grounds other that the nine catalogue crimes -such as terrorism, organised crime and crime against the state. Passed in parliament while ignoring the pleas of NGOs and of the internet sector, the Internet Law No. 5651 has since been used to temporarily ban popular platforms such as Blogger, Last.fm, Vimeo, Wordpress and YouTube. At the same time, some blocking decisions by the courts (e.g., Google and Facebook) were not enforced by the authorities. Since its introduction, the European Court of Human Rights has ruled that Law No. 5651 (Council of Europe, 2011) is against the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR, 2013). This article provides an overview of internet censorship and its social background in Turkey.

Notes that, like the technology itself, almost all research in information systems originates in Western countries, particularly the USA, where conditions are very different from developing countries. In order to examine the implications of transferring information technology to the developing countries, identifies four Turkish organizations which had pioneered executive information systems (EIS). Conducts extensive interviews with both the executive users and the support staff explaining that the scarcity of EIS applications in the country required such a qualitative case‐study approach. Observes that conditions in developing countries are greatly different from those of developed countries, and the reasons for research into such differences in conditions are manifold, the maturity level of IT and the sociocultural environment being the most important aspects. Concludes that the cultural environment has very important implications for organizational and managerial practices as well as for the implementation of information technologies which attempt to provide increasingly close support to managerial decision making.

Purpose -The purpose of this paper is to compare the web-based tax filing systems of Turkey and South Korea. The comparison is based on user satisfaction which has parameters such as ease of work, adequacy of the amount of information, display speed, convenience to life, job productivity, and help service. Design/methodology/approach -The tax filing systems are presented along with a background of such systems and their usability parameters. The survey instrument that has been prepared for gauging user satisfaction was applied to the users in both countries. The statistical analyses of the results are performed through t-test and stepwise regression. Findings -The study shows that users in the two countries felt differently in such factors as ease of work, adequacy of the amount of information, display speed, convenience to life, job productivity, and help service. Although Turkey has a complex tax system Turkish users did not find the tax filing system difficult to use and that may be attributable to the fact that they are accounting professionals who frequently use the system. Practical implications -Electronic tax filing is an important e-government application that has become increasingly common all over the world. Beyond the usual benefits of e-government such as reducing transaction costs and providing convenience, electronic tax filing systems are particularly useful for governments to avoid tax evasion and errors. Although, by definition, web-based tax filing systems of different countries have to be different, universal design parameters of each system and the resulting user satisfaction levels may provide guidelines for new systems. Originality/value -Unlike other types of information systems, which have been comparatively analyzed in the context of more than one country, this is not applicable to e-government systems. To the authors' knowledge the present article is the first attempt to compare and analyze two countries' different e-government systems.