Human Rights Violations in Cyberspace: Internet Censorship and Online Surveillance in Turkey
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2021-4215-AJMMC – 28 APR 2021
1 Human Rights Violations in Cyberspace:
2 Internet Censorship and Online Surveillance in Turkey
3
4 Internet censorship has recently been a hotly-debated issue in Turkey. In the
5 age of information society, online freedoms are seen as inseparable parts of
6 liberal democracies. In contemporary world, not only in Turkey but in many
7 other countries, there are many people who use social media platforms and
8 digital news outlets as an alternative to traditional media that consist of TV
9 channels, radio and print media. In such an environment, online freedoms
10 are significant to be able to reach information. In addition, the right to have
11 freedom of expression through online platforms such as social media sites
12 has been an important aspect of individual liberties. This article is an
13 attempt to address the restrictions exercised in the realm of online freedoms
14 in Turkish context and to analyze how online censorship and online
15 surveillance impact democracy. For this aim, some of the important and up-
16 to-date internet censorship cases will be covered.
17
18 Keywords: Cyberspace, Democracy, Internet Censorship, Human Rights,
19 Internet in Turkey
20
21
22 Introduction
23
24 The issue of online censorship has lately become quite important in the
25 context of democracy and freedoms debate in both Turkey and abroad.
26 Immanuel Kant described freedom of expression as the most harmless freedom
27 and noted that every human-being must have freedom. From the perspective of
28 Kant, it can be said that the restrictions put on the exercise of freedom are
29 incompatible with the fundamental characteristics of human nature and
30 therefore they are unacceptable. Following Kant, this article stresses the
31 protection of online freedoms as a critical dimension of human rights.
32 The 21th century is characterized by the deep impact of technology. The
33 information and technology have been two notions shaping the nature of this
34 century. In this age, internet censorship and online surveillance have been two
35 major topics lying at the heart of democracy and human rights debates. When
36 talking about human rights, the rights which are protected under the United
37 Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the International
38 Covenant on Civil and Political Rights such as the freedom of speech, freedom
39 of expression and freedom of association are seen as some of the most basic
40 human rights. Today, Internet has emerged as a new arena for expressing
41 fundamental human rights such as freedom of speech. In this regard, in 2011,
42 the UN Special Reporter on Freedom of Opinion and Expression in partnership
43 with the reporters from Europe, Africa and Latin America signed a declaration
44 confirming that freedom of expression must also be valid for the Internet. In
45 2012 the UN Human Rights Council also confirmed that the same rights people
46 have in offline platforms must also be under guarantee in online platforms
47 (Rossini and Green, 2015).
12021-4215-AJMMC – 27 APR 2021
1 Turkey has been one of the countries that suffer from internet censorship.
2 According to Freedom House Report published in 2020, Turkey’s internet
3 freedom score is 35/100 and the country is regarded as ―not free‖. Online
4 censorship has been one of the factors that harm Turkish democracy. Through
5 practices such as online censorship the media freedom is also put under threat
6 which ultimately erodes democracy.
7 This article is an attempt to analyze internet censorship and online
8 surveillance in Turkey and how it impacts democracy and human rights. The
9 main argument of the article is that the recent examples showing how online
10 freedoms are curbed should also be seen as examples of the weakening of
11 democracy and examples which threaten and even violate human rights.
12 Following this argument this article proceeds in four sections. In the first
13 section, the concepts of cyberspace and cybersecurity will be addressed along
14 with addressing the basic human rights violations seen in cyberspace. In the
15 second section, the legislative framework regarding Internet in Turkey will be
16 addressed. In the third section, current practices of internet censorship in
17 Turkey will be analyzed. In the final section, the analysis is devoted to how
18 online censorship impacts democracy and human rights in Turkey.
19
20
21 Threats against Human Rights in Cyberspace
22
23 The notion of ―cyberspace‖ was first introduced by William Gibson in
24 1982. Gibson later popularized the term in his science fiction novel
25 Neuromancer published in 1984 to make reference to a virtual environment.
26 The concept of ―cyberspace‖ does not have fixed and clear definition. The US
27 Department of Defense defined cyberspace as a globally-set domain in the
28 information sphere consisting of the ―interdependent network of
29 information technology infrastructures, including the Internet,
30 telecommunications networks, computer systems, and embedded processors
31 and controllers‖ (Mbanaso and Dandaura, 2015, p. 18). Based on this
32 definition, it can be said that cyberspace is the environment wherein all the
33 internet users are surrounded. Thus security, privacy and freedom in
34 cyberspace are vital for the protection of human rights while using internet.
35 According to Freedom Online Coalition1 (2017), cybersecurity is defined
36 as the preservation of the integrity and availability of information and its
37 environment to enhance the security of users in both online and offline arenas.
38 In this regard, it is to be noted that threats to cybersecurity are also the threats
39 evident in cyberspace and these threats mostly can be human rights violations.
40 There are various threats against human rights in cyberspace. As a way of
41 internet censorship one of them is network blockings. Such blockings violate
42 various rights, including limiting or banning access to information and the
1
The Freedom Online Coalition is a partnership of several governments, working to advance
Internet freedom. The Coalition was established in 2011. Today the Coalition has 32 members
from Africa to Asia, Europe, the Americas, and the Middle East. (https://freedomonline
coalition.com/about-us/history/)
22021-4215-AJMMC – 27 APR 2021
1 ability of people to express their opinions as well as enjoying basic social and
2 cultural rights. The digital rights defender organization Access Now (2019)
3 notes that 196 internet shutdowns were documented in 68 countries in 2018. In
4 this context, the concept of ―network neutrality‖ is important. Network
5 Neutrality means that all digital communications and activities should be
6 exercised in a non-discriminatory way regardless of their content. Network
7 neutrality defends the view that that Internet environment must have a non-
8 discriminatory nature so that Internet users can freely choose content without
9 any sort of discrimination (Belli and DeFilippi, 2016). In this regard, network
10 neutrality is required for a fair distribution of internet usage among people
11 regardless of their nationality, gender or political ideology.
12 On the other hand, besides network blockings there are a wide-range of
13 issues relating to human rights violations in cyberspace. One of them is
14 internet-based child pornography. Both the distribution and possession of child
15 pornography are criminal offences in many countries in contemporary world.
16 Child pornography problem is not new. In the 1970s there was an explosion
17 of child pornography mainly in Denmark, the Netherlands and Sweden
18 which had liberal laws concerning sexuality. In these countries movies
19 and books with pornographic images of minors were sold legally
20 (Morales, 2002). The emergence of Internet in late 1990s facilitated child
21 pornography’s production, distribution and consumption. Internet allows easy
22 access to pornographic material with the use of images with total
23 anonymity (Seto, 2013). Due to this anonymity, sharing and circulating
24 pornographic content is easy and this makes it hard to fight against this human
25 rights violation in cyberspace.
26 Another threat against human rights in cyberspace is cyber-bullying.
27 UNICEF 2 defines cyber-bullying as bullying via digital channels. Cyber-
28 bullying can also be defined as using technology intentionally to use negative
29 words and/or actions against a person which causes distress and undermines
30 that person’s well-being. In a similar vein, cyber-racism and cyber-sexism are
31 other examples of human rights violations in cyberspace.
32 Another threat against human rights in cyberspace is related with online
33 surveillance. It should be noted that personal privacy is essential to the
34 development of the identity, thus it can be said that online surveillance
35 threatens individuals’ ability to construct social identities besides limiting their
36 freedoms. Stoycheff (2016, p. 12) notes that ―the government‘s online
37 surveillance programs may threaten the disclosure of minority views and
38 contribute to the reinforcement of majority opinion.‖ Online surveillance has
39 become a major threat against human rights in recent years. Harming the
40 confidentiality of communications through online surveillance is directly
41 linked to human rights violations. An example is the surveillance of Saudi
42 dissident Omar Abdulaziz, which had been related to the murder of Saudi
43 journalist Jamal Khashoggi. According to a lawsuit, Abdulaziz’s mobile phone
44 had been monitored by the Saudi government with spyware compromising the
2
UNICEF answers top 10 questions about cyber-bullying https://www.unicef.org/end-violence
/how-to-stop-cyberbullying
32021-4215-AJMMC – 27 APR 2021
1 confidentiality of his communications with Khashoggi before Khashoggi’s
2 murder (Brown and Esterhuysen, 2019). This example shows the level of
3 danger online surveillance practices can create for individuals.
4 Internet censorship is quite a critical issue while discussing threats against
5 human rights in cyberspace. A significant aspect of internet censorship is
6 directly related with freedom of expression and freedom to reach information.
7 It is known that freedom of expression is central to the protection of human
8 rights and democratic politics. Online censorships are vital for freedom of
9 expression and freedom of reaching information. The report published by
10 Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe in 2012 notes that
11 ―everyone should have a right to participate in the information society and
12 states have a responsibility to ensure citizens‘ access to the Internet is
13 guaranteed.‖
14 In recent years, Turkey has witnessed many internet censorship practices
15 which can be regarded as a threat to human rights in cyberspace. It is known
16 that the public institutions do not share the number of websites or online
17 content that received access bans however there are researches concerning this
18 issue which directly contribute to the scope of this article addressing how
19 human rights violations in Turkey are exercised through internet censorship.
20 These violations have a legal basis which enables censorship to be repeatedly
21 applicable especially with regards to political bans.
22
23
24 Legislative Regulations Regarding Internet Environment in Turkey
25
26 Turkey established the first internet connection in 1993. Based on January
27 2020 data, Turkey has 62.07 million active internet users and
28 54.00 million social media users (Kemp, 2020). Turkey is characterized as a
29 ―not free‖ country in terms of online freedoms in the Freedom House Report
30 published in 2020. Since 1993, the main purpose of internet censorship has
31 been blocking ―harmful‖ political content and obscenity (Akgül and Kırlıdoğ,
32 2015, p. 12). The curbs of online freedoms and the exercise of online
33 surveillance are significant issues that must be put into consideration while
34 discussing human rights violations in cyberspace in the context of Turkey.
35 Internet censorship history of Turkey cannot fully be grasped without
36 making reference to the legislative regulations concerning online freedoms.
37 Turkey did not pay much attention to the regulation of the Internet until 2001.
38 In these years, there were no specific laws for the regulation of the Internet
39 (Akdeniz and Altıparmak, 2008, p. 3). The initial regulation for internet was
40 made in 2001 with Law Amending the Radio and Television Law, Press Law,
41 Income Tax Law and the Corporate Tax Law. With the law passed in 2001, two
42 regulations regarding internet were introduced in Law on the Establishment of
43 Radio and Television and Broadcasting and Press Law (Freeweb Turkey
44 Report, 2021). In 2004, a penal code was passed with provisions on the
45 internet. At that time, a commission was formed to draft an ―Internet law‖ to
46 accommodate missing parts of criminal law. The commission making the
42021-4215-AJMMC – 27 APR 2021
1 ‖Internet law‖ included members from different sectors. They made a draft bill
2 named ―Law on Network Services and Computer Crimes.‖ The draft was to be
3 presented to the Prime Minister’s Office (cited in Akgül and Kırlıdoğ, 2015, p.
4 4). Following this declaration, it can be said that Turkey has witnessed lots of
5 human rights violations deriving from the application of this law.
6 The first law about the internet was Law No. 5651 on the Regulation of
7 Publications on the Internet and Suppression of Crimes Committed by means
8 of Such Publication. This law ―Internet Ortamında Yapılan Yayınların
9 Düzenlenmesi ve Bu Yayınlar Yoluyla İşlenen Suçlarla Mücadele Edilmesi
10 Hakkında Kanun‖ was fully in force by the end of November 2007. The
11 European Court of Human Rights has declared that Law No. 5651 is against
12 the European Convention on Human Rights (Akgül and Kırlıdoğ, 2015)
13 In the following years, Law No. 5651 was amended several times to give
14 the state authorities more power for surveillance and censorship (Freeweb
15 Turkey Report, 2021). It should be noted that the law passed in 2007 was seen
16 as an online censorship law (Akdeniz, 2010). It established a unit responsible
17 for imposing bans on websites (Akgül, 2008). In 2014, Parliament passed
18 another bill including new regulations on Internet which gave more power to
19 the official institutions (Anadolu Agency, 2014). The latest amendment to
20 internet has been the Law No. 7253 amending the Law on the Regulation of
21 Internet Broadcasts and the Prevention of Crimes Committed Through Such
22 Broadcasts which partly entered into force on July 20, 2020 and partly as of
23 October 1, 2020 (Freeweb Turkey Report, 2021, p. 4).
24
25
26 Practices of Internet Censorship in Turkey
27
28 In Turkey, there had been several practices of blocking and filtering of
29 websites before 2007. Several websites were blocked as early as in 2000. For
30 example, the closure of which was a website critical of the
31 administration of the Turkish Army was widely covered in the media. This
32 website had invited members of the army to air complaints about Turkish
33 Armed Forces and it was taken down in 2001 (Akdeniz and Altıparmak, 2008,
34 p. 6). Although in this period, many websites were banned, 2007 is considered
35 to be the starting date of internet censorship. As noted, in 2007, Turkey passed
36 a law to protect the internet from ―harmful content‖ which caused the
37 censorship of several websites.
38
39
40 Bans on Youtube
41
42 A practice of YouTube censorship was witnessed in 2007 with the
43 imposition of ban on Youtube. The reason of the ban was a video that insulted
44 Atatürk and 2.5 years later, the ban was lifted (BBC, 2010). In 2010, Turkey
45 put a ban on YouTube again. This time the ban was made over an old video
46 purportedly showing former opposition leader Deniz Baykal in a hotel room
52021-4215-AJMMC – 27 APR 2021
1 with a woman other than his wife (PC Mag, 2010). Until 2014, there were
2 more than 30 court decisions banning YouTube (Akgül and Kırlıdoğ, 2015, p.
3 7). In 2014, Turkey banned YouTube once again. This time the ban was made
4 due to a video which was posted claiming to depict Turkey's foreign minister,
5 spy chief, and a top general discussing scenarios that could lead to Turkey’s
6 military intervention in Syria (Parkinson and Peker, 2014). According to
7 reports of internet monitoring center Turkey Blocks (2016) Turkey once again
8 banned access to YouTube after footage that allegedly showed the immolation
9 of Turkish soldiers by terrorists had been published on Youtube in late 2016.
10
11 Figure 1. The screenshot showing that access to YouTube was blocked by the
12 decision of the Ankara 5th Criminal Court of Peace
13
14
15
16 Bans on Facebook
17
18 In 2009, a ban on Facebook was made however the decision was not
19 implemented. Due to a Facebook group claiming that Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu,
20 head of the main opposition party was supporting PKK, Kılıçdaroğlu's lawyer
21 went to court asking for the blocking the access to this Facebook group. The
22 court approved the request and the court decision was passed to the Presidency
23 of Telecommunication and Communication 3 but the Presidency did not
24 implement the decision (Akgül and Kırlıdoğ, 2015, p. 8). Kılıçdaroğlu made a
25 declaration that he did not want Facebook to be banned they in fact asked for
26 the removal of the unethical content (Asbarez News Agency, 2010). Apart
27 from that in 2015, Facebook and Twitter were temporarily banned after the
28 circulation of the images showing public prosecutor Mehmet Selim Kiraz being
29 threatened by the terrorists (Holtz, 2015). Another ban on Facebook was seen
30 in February 2020 on the day when the military crisis in Idlib escalated
3
Telecommunications Communication Presidency (―TIB‖) was established within the
Telecommunications Authority in August 2005 and became fully functional in July 2006. In August
2016, TIB was officially shut down. The then Deputy Prime Minister Numan Kurtulmus said:
―TIB’s powers, responsibilities, staff and its whole technical possibilities will be transferred to the
Information and Communication Technologies Authority.‖(Anadolu Agency, August 17, 2016).
62021-4215-AJMMC – 27 APR 2021
1 (NetBlocks, 2020). This Facebook ban can be viewed as a direct consequence
2 of national security-related restrictions exercised in cyberspace.
3
4
5 Bans on Twitter
6
7 In 2013 during Gezi Park protests the then prime minister Recep Tayyip
8 Erdoğan labelled Twitter as ―a menace to society‖ (Nielson, 2013). Social
9 media censorship gained a new momentum in the aftermath of the Gezi
10 protests in 2013. The social media networks like Twitter were used effectively
11 in organizing demonstrations and disseminating news. In a similar vein,
12 another event that stimulated online censorship had been the ―December 17
13 and 25 corruption scandal‖ that broke out in late 2013. During that period, the
14 mainstream traditional media was controlled by the government and this
15 showed the critical role of the internet to reach alternative sources of
16 information. According to Twitter's transparency report4, Turkey leads in social
17 media censorship (Turkey Blocks, 2017). Erdoğan had vowed to eradicate
18 Twitter on March 20 2014 (Watson and Tüysüz, 2014). Twitter was banned on
19 that day without any court decision (Dockterman, 2014). In the following
20 months some Twitter accounts such as @fuatavni which posted about
21 corruption claims were banned (Musil, 2014). In the aftermath of the failed
22 coup attempt in 2016, Turkey asked Twitter to hush accounts, some belonging
23 to journalists from the newspaper Zaman, close to the Gulenist network which
24 Turkish state named as ―FETO‖ and accuses of staging the failed coup
25 (McCoy, 2014). Later, Twitter has switched off a number of these accounts.
26 It should also be noted that, from time to time, social media posts on
27 Twitter criticizing AK Party have been blocked. For instance, In April 2020,
28 Journalist Fatih Portakal criticized AK Party’s management of the COVID-19
29 pandemic on social media, later, access to Portakal’s post was blocked, and an
30 indictment was prepared against Portakal’s posts (Freeweb Turkey Report,
31 2021). Professor Yaman Akdeniz and expert Ozan Güven (2020, p. 3) in the
32 research they made for the ―Engelli Web – Disabled Web – Project‖5 which
33 was carried out by the Freedom of Expression Association note that 7.000
34 Twitter accounts and 40.000 tweets were blocked by the end of 2019.
35 Wikipedia Ban
36
37 Wikipedia launched in 2001 is a free, multilingual online encyclopedia
38 created and maintained by volunteer contributors from all over the world. The
39 ban on access to Wikipedia was made based on the decision of the Ankara 1st
40 Criminal Judgeship of Peace in April 2017. The ban continued during 2019.
4
The transparency reports are prepared by Twitter Transparency Center. Twitter Transparency
Center covers information requests, removal requests, copyright notices, trademark notices,
email security, Twitter Rules enforcement, platform manipulation, and state-backed
information operations. (https://transparency.twitter.com/)
5
The project monitors the websites, social media posts and other online contents which are
blocked. For more information, you can visit https://ifade.org.tr/engelliweb/
72021-4215-AJMMC – 27 APR 2021
1 The ban was put due to the English version's article on ―state-sponsored
2 terrorism‖ where Turkey was described as a sponsor country for ISIS and Al-
3 Qaeda and Turkish courts viewed this as a public manipulation of mass media
4 and this provided the basis for the ban of Wikipedia. (Benjakob, 2018).
5 However, the ban was lifted in January 2020 when the Constitutional Court
6 ruled that the ban had been a violation of the freedom of expression.
7
8
9 Bans on Several News Websites
10
11 Some leftist and pro-Kurdish news websites have been constantly blocked
12 in Turkey. It is known that some of the websites choose to change their names
13 to overcome blocking measures. For instance, the names of the website of the
14 daily newspaper Özgür Gündem (Free Agenda) were changed for several times
15 like and however they were all
16 banned (Akdeniz and Altıparmak, 2008). Özgür Gündem has been accused of
17 making PKK propaganda. A month after the failed coup attempt in 2016, the
18 newspaper was shut down following a court order and some journalists were
19 taken into custody facing charges of ―membership of a terrorist organization‖
20 (Hurriyet Daily News, 2016). The newspaper was succeeded by the digital
21 newspaper Özgürlükçü Demokrasi (Libertarian Democracy) but its website is
22 blocked in Turkey. By 2018, Özgürlükçü Demokrasi news website had been
23 banned for the 45th time (MSLA Turkey, 2018).
24 OdaTV was another website that had been blocked. In March 2020, after
25 the release of the news about a member of the National Intelligence
26 Organization who died in Libya, access to the OdaTV news website was
27 banned. Moreover, in April 2020, 18 news websites, including Independent
28 Turkish, Al Riyadh and Al Hayat were blocked in retaliation against Saudi
29 Arabia’s access block to Turkey’s state-run Anadolu Agency. In May 2020,
30 the news site that was founded by journalist Can Dündar was
31 banned (Freeweb Turkey Report, 2021, p. 11). In addition, Mesopotamia
32 Agency, New Democracy websites along with Kanal Z and Etkin News
33 Agency (ETHA) were banned in 2020 (Freeweb Turkey Report, 2021, p. 12).
34 These banned news websites have been characterized as having an anti-
35 government discourse.
36
37
38 Bans on Personal Blogs
39
40 In 2008, was banned upon a complaint by Digiturk, a
41 broadcasting company that had the rights to broadcasting the Turkish Football
42 League matches (Hürriyet, 2008). The decision was suspended in 2015.
43 Another ban was made for the The site hosted a PhD
44 student’s blog which contained anti-Atatürk remarks. Through a court decision
45 the whole site was banned in 2010. The PhD student who published his work
46 on applied to the European Court of Human Rights and the
82021-4215-AJMMC – 27 APR 2021
1 court found that Turkey violated the European Convention on Human Rights
2 (Akgül and Kırlıdoğ, 2015, p. 8).
3
4
5 Bans on Web Addresses (URL-based) of News Articles
6
7 It is known that access to many news articles was blocked via URL-based
8 blocking in recent years. In this section, some blockings which took place in
9 2019 and 2020 will be covered. The news articles and URL addresses of
10 newspapers such as Cumhuriyet, Birgün, Evrensel, Diken, T24, BBC, Gazete
11 Duvar, and OdaTV are frequently blocked (Akdeniz and Güven, 2020, p. 17).
12 An example of the blocked news articles was about the allocation of the
13 Atatürk Forest Farm and the TCDD Museum to Medipol University, founded
14 by the Minister of Health, Fahrettin Koca. Access to these articles was banned
15 in 2019 (Akdeniz and Güven, 2020, p. 30).
16 Another example of a URL-based ban was the news article addressing the
17 agriculture report by Milli Gazete. The ban decision was taken by Ankara 8th
18 Criminal Judgeship of Peace in July 2020. In the same month access to news
19 articles covering Berat Albayrak not responding to parliamentary questions
20 was banned. Another URL-based blocking seen in July was related with the
21 news reports about torturing of a cat. In September 2020, news reports on
22 investigation into private hospitals in Samsun for hiking fees during pandemic
23 were blocked. In September 2020, another URL-based ban was put on the
24 access to the news reports covering the shift of a university campus in Erzincan
25 to health facility due to increase in Covid-19 cases by Erzincan Criminal
26 Judgeship of Peace.
27 5.599 news articles (URL-based) were blocked in 2019 pursuant to a total
28 of 888 separate orders issued by separate criminal Judgeships of Peace.
29 (Akdeniz and Güven, 2020, p. 24). From November 1, 2019 to October 31
30 2020, access blockings for at least 1910 URLs were documented and when the
31 blocked URLs of news content are examined, it is seen that there is major
32 consistency in these decisions in a thematic sense (Freeweb Turkey Report,
33 2021, p. 9). As seen in the examples above, access blockings were made for
34 different themes: from news regarding violence against animals to news
35 regarding the government.
36
92021-4215-AJMMC – 27 APR 2021
1
2 Figure 2. Number of blocked and removed news articles (URL-based) in 2019
3 (Akdeniz and Güven, 2020, p. 25)
4
5
6
7
102021-4215-AJMMC – 27 APR 2021
1 The Shadow of Internet Censorship over Democracy and Human Rights
2 in Turkey
3
4 Robert Dahl in his book Dilemmas of Pluralist Democracy published in
5 1982 lists the ―procedural minimal requirements‖ of liberal democracies as the
6 following:
7
8 Government decisions are made by elected officials.
9 There are free and fair elections.
10 All adults have the right to vote.
11 All adults have the right to be elected.
12 All citizens have a right to express their views without having the fear
13 of being punished.
14 All citizens have a right to reach alternative sources of information.
15 Alternative sources of information exist and they are under the
16 guarantee of law.
17 All citizens have the right to form independent associations.
18
19 According to the procedural minimal requirements defined by Dahl, it can
20 be said that the right to have a right to express opinions without the danger of
21 punishment on political issues and the right to have alternative sources of
22 information along with the protection of these rights by law are directly related
23 with freedom of expression and freedom of speech which are defined as basic
24 human rights that are guaranteed under the United Nations Universal
25 Declaration of Human Rights and the International Covenant on Civil and
26 Political Rights. In democratic countries human rights should be protected by
27 law. However, while analyzing Turkey, it can be easily seen that the citizens’
28 right to express themselves without the danger of punishment on political
29 matters is not always under the guarantee of law. On the contrary, citizens face
30 detention or even imprisonment due to expressing their views on social media.
31 Minister of Interior Affairs Süleyman Soylu announced that 20. 474 people had
32 been processed for social media posts between 2013 and 2018 (Cumhuriyet,
33 2019).
34 On the other hand, the citizens’ right to seek alternative sources of
35 information is not under always the protection of law in Turkey. On the
36 contrary, alternative sources of information such as social media or media
37 platforms of the opposition have been silenced on a regular basis. The websites
38 of critical media platforms have been censored or punished while the reporters
39 and journalists have faced detention or imprisonment. Online censorship
40 exercised on critical media actors not only violates a democratic right such as
41 reaching alternative sources of information but it also endangers press freedom
42 which is detrimental to democracy. In addition, the censorship of social media
43 harms the basic human right of freedom of expression as well.
44 Since 1950, Turkey has been a democratic country. However democracy
45 has been suspended due to military interventions in almost every decade. After
46 the e-memorandum seen in 2007 during presidential election period, the
112021-4215-AJMMC – 27 APR 2021
1 midnight declaration6 released on April 4, 2021 by 104 retired admirals over
2 remarks made by Parliament Speaker Mustafa Şentop on the Montreux
3 Convention has been seen as a military intervention attempt in politics by
4 different political actors. It should be said that since the failed coup attempt in
5 2016, the civil-military relationship has been changed to an important degree
6 compared to previous years. The democratization of civil-military relations in
7 Turkey can be seen as a sign showing that Turkish democracy is no longer
8 under the threat of military coups. Today democracy has other problems which
9 have always been there but not been discussed. Media freedom is under threat
10 and the online censorship of alternative news resources is only one cause
11 behind this threat. Moreover, freedom of speech and freedom of expression are
12 not fully exercised by all the citizens.
13 The number of websites which have been blocked since 2008 reached
14 29.006 as of April 10, 2013. The real number is thought to be over 30,000. The
15 blocking of access to online content without the need for a court order or the
16 requirement for approval is considered among the negative developments in
17 international reports (Henkoğlu and Yılmaz, 2013, p. 220). Six years later, by
18 the end of 2019, an important increase was seen in online censorship. It was
19 found that 130.000 URLs, 7.000 Twitter accounts, 40.000 tweets, 10.000
20 YouTube videos, and 6.200 pieces of Facebook content were blocked. In
21 addition, around 50.000 contents (URLs) were removed by the end of 2019
22 (Akdeniz and Güven, 2020, p. 3).
23
24
25 Conclusion
26
27 This article has attempted to provide an account of internet censorship
28 issue in Turkey and how it influences democratic politics and human rights.
29 Following this aim, recent practices of online censorship have been covered.
30 As known, the human rights violations in cyberspace have not only been
31 related to internet censorship and online surveillance. The cybercrimes such as
32 child pornography, cyber-racism and cyber-bullying are other examples that
33 violate human rights. However, the scope of this article has been limited to
34 internet censorship practices and online surveillance in Turkey as examples of
35 human rights violations in cyberspace.
36 Based on the data concerning online censorship in Turkey, it can be argued
37 that the rights of reaching alternative sources of information and the rights of
38 freedom of speech have been under threat in recent years. According to data
39 released in 2019, it is observed that 44.424 social media accounts were
40 investigated, and legal action was taken against 22.728 accounts. By the end of
41 2019, 53.814 social media accounts were investigated in relation to the crimes
42 of ―making propaganda for a terrorist organization, praising those
43 organizations, publicly declaring affiliation with terrorist organizations,
6
In the aftermath of the release of the declaration, the Ankara Public Prosecutor's Office
launched an investigation into a declaration signed by retired navy admirals (Daily Sabah,
April 4, 2021)
122021-4215-AJMMC – 27 APR 2021
1 inciting people to enmity and hatred, insulting state officials, acting against the
2 indivisible integrity of the state and threatening the safety of the nation, and
3 hate speech.‖ (Akdeniz and Güven, 2020, p. 62). In such an environment
4 wherein online surveillance has been actively performed, online censorship has
5 reached to a surprising level. Today, online censorship and surveillance can be
6 seen as integral parts of both economic and political building blocks of Turkey.
7 Online censorship exercised on critical media actors is a growing concern
8 for media freedom in Turkey. In addition, the citizens criticizing the
9 government do not feel free while expressing their opinions especially on
10 social media. These two factors constitute a critical impact on the erosion of
11 democratic values. It can be said that Internet censorship is a shadow over
12 democracy and human rights in Turkey and online freedoms issue must be
13 handled with the participation of various actors from the government, civil
14 society, academia and journalism circles.
15 As digitalization has gained a new momentum in the last decades, online
16 freedoms issue has been one of the hotly debated issues in both Turkey and
17 abroad. In order to provide a solid ground for the protection of online
18 freedoms, a new legal framework and institutional arrangements are required.
19 In such a way, Turkey can have a more powerful basis for protecting the rights
20 of different groups in the society regardless of their political or ethnic
21 orientations.
22
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49
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