Human Rights Watch slams Turkey's social media law over censorship

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Erdoğan government's draft bill to turn social media into open prison in Turkey, experts warn

The Turkish government’s efforts to introduce new powers to control social media will greatly increase online censorship, particularly in light of the country’s poor record on freedom of expression, Human Rights Watch said on July 27.

The Turkish government is rushing a legal amendment to Turkey’s internet law through parliament before the summer recess in a move to force social media platforms like Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube to comply with any demands by the government to block or remove content.

“If passed, the new law will enable the government to control social media, to get content removed at will, and to arbitrarily target individual users,” said Tom Porteous, deputy program director at Human Rights Watch.

“Social media is a lifeline for many people who use it to access news, so this law signals a new dark era of online censorship," he added.

New social media regulation to resemble legislation in Germany: AKP sources

The draft amendment would require social media companies with over one million users a day to have offices in Turkey. The penalty for companies that didn’t comply would be fines and restriction of bandwidth making the platform unusable.

The companies that open these offices would have to comply with government demands to block and remove content or face very heavy fines.

Human Rights Watch said that it's concerned at compliance with removal requests would also entail handing over the personal details of individual users if ordered to do so by a court since the law also stipulates that user data has to be stored locally.

The ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) has been seeking to introduce the said amendment for several months. It was first floated in an April bill on economic measures to address COVID-19 but was then withdrawn. The current proposal is a revised version of the April draft, adding provisions to order the full removal of content and increasing the level of fines social media companies could face for noncompliance.

“It is essential for everyone who values and champions free speech to recognize how damaging these new restrictions will be in a country where an autocracy is being constructed by silencing media and all critical voices,” Porteous said.

“Social media companies should loudly and unequivocally call on Turkey to drop this law, and the EU should resolutely back this call," he added.