New report says Turkish courts blocked thousands of posts and hundreds of accounts on X (Twitter) in 2022, mostly on national security grounds or citing violations of personal rights.
December 20, 2023, Balkan Insight.
A new report prepared by journalist Ali Safa Korkut from the Media and Law Studies Association, MLSA says Turkey’s courts in 2022 blocked hundreds of accounts and thousands of tweets on X (Twitter).
“In 2022, access to at least 4,427 Twitter URLs, including 487 Twitter accounts and 3,940 tweets, was blocked. This number was reached by 393 court decisions,” the report entitled “Baby, The Bird is Dead. 2022 Twitter Access Blocks Report” funded by the EU said.
The report also classified the blocked tweets. According to this, 2,106 tweets on public officials, 1,126 tweets on illegal betting sites and terror, 316 tweets on individuals and 118 tweets on public institutions were blocked.
The report underlined that certain courts lead the access block decisions.
“When the distribution of the authorities that blocked the most tweets is looked at, three criminal courts of peace from Ankara were in the top five. Ankara 6th Criminal Court of Peace ranked first with 2,024 tweets, followed by Ankara 3rd Criminal Court of Peace with 153 tweets and Ardahan Criminal Court of Peace with 140 tweets,” the report wrote.
The legal basis for access blocks was mostly because of violations of personal rights and protection of national security.
“In 2022, 2,909 tweets were blocked based on this article [violation of personal rights]. This means that almost three out of every four tweets are blocked for this reason. In second place was ‘protection of national security and public order’, with 1,031 tweets,” the report wrote.
In terms of blocked accounts, the main reason cited was protection of national security.
“In 2022, 465 accounts were blocked based on this article [protection of national security and public order]. In second place was the violation of ‘personal rights’ specified in Article 9 of Law No. 5651. The number of accounts blocked based on this article in 2022 is 22,” the report noted.
Under President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s rule, Turkey has blocked many social media platforms, including YouTube, Wikipedia, Twitter and TikTok, using draconian laws and regulations.
Courts and public agencies are increasingly ordering access blocks to social media content. The watchdog Freedom House’s Internet Freedom Status ranking classifies Turkey as “not free”.
This article has been amended on December 20, 2023 to clarify that the report is prepared by journalist Ali Safa Korkut not by the Media and Law Studies Association, MLSA.