The New Social Media Law: What Will It Change in Our Lives, and What Is Its Real Aim?

What will it change in our lives? What is its real aim?

We assess the bill, also known as the “disinformation law”, in terms of the coming elections, politics and individuals.

Cebrail Bozkurt:

The most controversial article of the bill on media and social media in the Justice Committee of the Turkish Grand National Assembly, “Publicly disseminating false information concerning Turkey’s internal and external security, public order and general health, with the motive of creating anxiety, fear or panic among the public, in a manner capable of disturbing public peace, is defined as a crime”, passed the committee by a majority of AKP and MHP members. The criticism of “vagueness” raised by a Court of Cassation judge on the committee was also ignored.

Although the government has brought the mainstream media under control, social media is a free space and news spreads very fast there. The operation against journalists before the Syria operation showed once again that the government does not want to offer anyone the option of looking through any window other than its own.

Although price rises are based on TurkStat data, people eagerly await the figures of ENAG. The government, which declared victory with a fait accompli in the last elections, wants to silence dissenting voices with the stick of a “vague” criminal sanction. The law also matters as a way to pre-empt revelations that may come from Sedat Peker and similar figures or groups, because a government losing blood before the elections does not want any more surprises.

A government that wants to act in the election atmosphere only through manipulations under its own control seems set to anger the public even more with this law.

Erdal Turna:

It is very clear that we need a legal framework that encourages ethical practice and freedoms on social media and the internet. Setting this well-meant expectation aside, we suddenly found ourselves debating a censorship law that monopolises almost every area of internet publishing by concentrating it in the hands of the Presidency’s administrative apparatus.

The government is now striving to turn the restrictions on press and expression it has tended to extend so far into a legal framework that includes criminal provisions. The political opposition, meanwhile, is, so to speak, a sheep in wolf’s clothing, unable to find any solution to the government’s dictatorial practices other than raising its voice from the parliamentary rostrum. As a result, the voice of the social opposition, which has been rendered almost unable to move and is seeking a place on social media as a last resort, seems about to be silenced altogether.

The opposition has contributed as much as the government to building this mechanism of censorship and pressure imposed by the government.  Using the divisive policies and hate speech of the executive, sometimes eagerly and sometimes unwittingly, has unfortunately made the opposition a stakeholder in the government’s abuses.

Influential figures of the political opposition must act at once to pull their parties out of this state of obliviousness. Otherwise, just as today we are talking about unbridled censorship and the monopolisation of power on social media and the internet, tomorrow we will go on reading the opposition’s dissenting opinions in the parliamentary minutes of laws that restrict other areas of our social or private lives.

Bayram Bayır, Lawyer:

For the last 10 years, Turkish society has been exposed to the disinformation of pro-government media on an unprecedented scale. Almost all media outlets are under government control, and citizens cannot reach through them any information the government does not want them to have. Citizens’ access to newsworthy information is an important factor in setting the public agenda. In this sense, the government’s power is directly proportional to its ability to set the agenda. Lately, however, its ability to set the citizen’s agenda is not as strong as it was. Social media is undoubtedly one of the decisive factors here.

With the new social media law, citizens’ rights

• to create and spread their own agendas,
• to reach information and news from the source, 
• to reach agendas other than the government’s,
• to win the support of other individuals when claiming their rights,
• to say stop directly to wrongdoing, corruption and theft,
• to form and produce opinions about the actions of the government and its actors.

are meant to be taken away.

Citizens are now tired of the government’s agendas. Social media in its current form weakens the influence and steering power of the government and media actors over citizens. People now want to express their opinions freely on social media platforms and to reach plain information instantly. One of the things the government fears most is the production of ideas that counter its own rhetoric. (Update note: The bill became law in October 2022, adding the offence of “publicly disseminating misleading information” to the Turkish Penal Code as Article 217/A.)