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It appears Turkey has lifted the ban on the live-streaming platform Kick, as reported by journalist İbrahim Haskoloğlu in a recent post on X. The news comes about five days after the country started blocking access to the website due to it containing gambling, which violates some of the existing laws of the state. Twitch, it appears, remains banned.
The debate surrounding gambling on livestreams has been ongoing for years, and last week's sanctions against Kick sparked a lot of debate online, with many users sharing screenshots of error messages and pop-ups indicating that the website was being blocked. However, it appears the Stake-backed streaming platform has categorically removed gambling from the Turkish version of the website.
As per Haskoloğlu's post on X, the reason Twitch is still blocked/banned is that they have yet to do anything to censor the slots and betting streams.
Turkey reportedly reverses ban on Kick after removing gambling content
Gambling in Turkey is highly regulated, with the government agency National Lottery Administration in charge of enforcing the rules and regulations on every type of betting game in the country. Last week, it was this body that blocked the Stake-backed website, with Haskoloğlu claiming that officials had blamed the live-streaming platform for trying to influence the youth to take up gambling.
The Turkish journalist made a post on X, which reads:
"Turkish officials I spoke to stated that Kick's entry into Turkey was to attract Turkish youth to roulette."
As per the latest reports, it seems the official position on the streaming platform has changed because they removed content about gambling. Readers should note that Kick has been the subject of a lot of controversy surrounding gambling, especially considering its founders also own Stake.com, the highly popular online gambling website.
Stake has faced a lot of backlash on Twitch over the years, which ultimately led the Amazon-owned platform to severely restrict slots and other betting games. However, Twitch remains banned in Turkey for the time being as the website still features some types of betting games. It is unclear whether they will take steps to get the platform unbanned.
