Turkey to close window on press freedom once and for all

Turkey’s newly-passed social
media law will silence criticism of President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, and the
country has been “taking
steps to close the window on press freedom once and for all,” Reporters Without Borders (RSF) Germany Director
Christian Mihr wrote in an article for Deutsche Welle English on Thursday.
Accelerating after a failed
coup attempt in 2016, Turkey has been targeting journalists in unfair trials
and media pluralism has been all but destroyed in the country, Mihr said.
“Until recently, social
media platforms represented the last safe haven for critical Turkish
journalists,” he said. “It's clear that the aim of the law is to control social
media platforms in order to smother growing political unrest.”
The bill ratified in Turkish
parliament on Wednesday stipulates that social media platforms with more than
one million daily hits appoint a legal representative to facilitate requests by
Turkish authorities, comply with requests to remove content, and keep their
databases in Turkey so courts are able to access user data and identifying
personal information.
However, it won’t go into
effect immediately. Platforms have until Oct. 1 to appoint their
representatives.
“Following warnings and
various penalties, bandwidth throttling sentence will be doled out on April 1,
2021 the earliest, cyber rights activist and professor of law Yaman Akdeniz
said in a tweet. “Until then, the government will be waiting to see if Twitter
in particular will actually come (to Turkey).”
The RSF “rejects the
expansion of Turkey’s internet law,” the director said, pointing to the
importance of access to independent information, “vitally important in a
society as highly polarized as Turkey is today.”
Turkey has stepped up online
censorship, with at least 2,950 news articles and other journalistic content
blocked in 2018, Mihr said. The content, sometimes blocked arbitrarily without
any court order, included “research and reports on political corruption,
cronyism and human rights and labor abuses,” he said.
“Social media is one of a
very limited number of avenues where concerns over workplace deaths and labour
movements, violence against women, social movements, even animal rights can be
voiced where traditional media obscures them,” technology columnist for
Evrensel newspaper İsmail Gökhan
Bayram wrote in an earlier article.
“We are entering a different
phase,” Akdeniz told Ahval.
Akdeniz said the legislation
would allow the government to remove any content it deemed inappropriate, and
clear its past, using an example from the 2013 corruption probe that implicated
several top-level members of the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP).
“When you search for news
about December 17-25, you will only be able to access the news of the media
close to the government,” Akdeniz said. “The government will try to AK-wash its
history.”
PEN America in a statement
called the law “aggressive,” and a “direct and multifaceted threat to free
expression.”
It will do significant
damage by “enabling politically influenced censorship, the chilling of free
expression, and the potential for mass and politically motivated surveillance,”
the literary network said.
Provisions in the law will
“create a devil’s bargain for platforms choosing to operate in Turkey:
anticipate the ruling party’s needs and remove or block anything politically
inconvenient, or forego operation in Turkey entirely,” the statement cited PEN
America’s digital freedom program director Matt Bailey as saying. “The result
could be proactive commercial censorship, prolonged and uncertain judicial
appeals processes, and state incursions on privacy and online anonymity.”
Turkey’s main opposition
Republican People’s Party (CHP) had previously announced that it would appeal
to the Constitutional Court (AYM). CHP Deputy Chairman Onursal Adıgüzel had
warned of a new period of censorship, and possible police raids on data storage
centres “at a time when the judiciary is not independent.”