The bill imposes comprehensive regulations on social media, requiring foreign social media companies with more than 1 million users, such as Twitter and Facebook, to have a representative in the country. Under the new law, social media providers will be required to store home user data in Turkey, imposing fines of up to $ 1.5 million, as well as bandwidth restrictions and advertising bans, for non-compliance.
The government defends the bill as an effort to protect approximately 55 million users in Turkey from disinformation. “The bill was prepared with an innovative approach to protect users rather than restrict them,” said Ismail Cesur, a presidential adviser in a tweet.
“The bill aims to protect the basic rights and freedoms of citizens and preempt disinformation,” Mahir Unal, vice president of the Justice and Development party, said in an interview with state broadcaster TRT.
Why are rights groups concerned?
Critics fear the new law will arm social media companies against critical government voices.
Turkey’s record on freedom of expression and expression has already diminished. More than 408,000 websites were blocked in Turkey in late 2019, according to a report by Turkish internet freedom watchdog Ifade Ozgurlugu Platformu.
In the same period, 7,000 Twitter accounts, 40,000 tweets, 10,000 YouTube videos and 6,200 Facebook content were blocked. While some companies have complied with the decommissioning orders of the Turkish courts for some content, other requests have been ignored.
The new law requires companies to comply with dismantling orders. “The goal is to silence criticism,” said Yaman Akdeniz, an expert on cyber rights and a professor of law at Istanbul Bilgi University.
When does it take effect?
The law has yet to be passed by Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, but at this point that is just a formality. It has already spoken out in favor of more regulations on social media platforms. The bill passed in parliament gives tech companies until October to comply with the new law.
What are technology companies doing?
Social media companies have yet to react to the law, but cyber rights experts say the platforms should abandon the Turkish market instead of complying with the new law. “I tell technology companies not to come in these circumstances. If they do, they will become the long arm of the Turkish judicial system and will be forced to comply with all requests,” Akdeniz said. The law effectively means that platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram will have to decide whether to leave the lucrative Turkish market or stay while complying with the new measures.
Facebook and Snapchat declined to comment, while Twitter did not respond to a request for comment.
Has this happened elsewhere?
The Turkish government says the bill follows the model of the German Network Compliance Law to combat hate speech online. “We consider Germany as our starting point for everything from guaranteeing our freedom in the use of social platforms, to combating disinformation to protect the right to privacy and the protection of our data, and we came up with this new regulation” , said the Unal of the ruling party. said.
But human rights groups have criticized the German bill as flawed.
“It is vague, excessive and turns private companies into overly zealous censors to avoid heavy fines, leaving users without judicial oversight or the right to appeal,” Wenzel Michalski, Germany’s director at Human Rights Watch said in a statement when the law German approved 2018.
Akdeniz also warned that, given Turkey’s political climate, a sharp decline in freedom of expression and a history of silencing critics, “the comparison with Germany does not hold up.”
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