Internet & Online Safety - Turkey

Law No. 5651 authorises the BTK to issue administrative access-blocking orders for specified content categories without prior judicial review, and to throttle non-compliant platforms by up to 95% bandwidth. In the first seven months of 2025, authorities blocked or restricted access to over 3,300 URLs, with 'national security' cited as the leading rationale.

Social network providers with more than one million daily accesses from Turkey must appoint a resident legal representative, respond to user complaints within 48 hours, and comply with content-removal orders within 24–48 hours or face liability for damages. A 2025 BTK draft would further require platforms to establish a locally incorporated company and obtain a BTK licence.

Amendments published in the Official Gazette on 1 May 2026 (effective ~November 2026) prohibit social network providers from offering services to children under 15 and mandate age-verification systems to enforce this. Platforms must offer age-appropriate services and parental-control tools for 15–17-year-olds; gaming platforms must apply the highest age rating to any unrated content.

Turkey's first unified cybersecurity statute, published 19 March 2025, consolidates fragmented sector rules, establishes a Cybersecurity Board, and grants authorities broad court-ordered access to data held in Turkey. Critics note provisions criminalising false claims of data breaches with 2–5 years imprisonment, which human-rights groups say could suppress legitimate security reporting.

Blocking orders are disproportionately aimed at Kurdish media, independent news outlets, and journalists' social media accounts. The Constitutional Court annulled Article 9 of the internet law (personal-rights blocking) in October 2024, but enforcement patterns show continued heavy administrative restriction.

Freedom House's Freedom on the Net 2025 report gave Turkey a score of 31/100 (Not Free), ranking it among the worst globally alongside Egypt, Pakistan, Russia and Venezuela, citing endemic website blocking, social-media throttling, and criminal prosecutions for online speech.