Turkey’s new social media law put into effect

ANKARA

A law that sets new rules for social media platforms in Turkey was published in the Official Gazette and put into force on July 30.

The Turkish Parliament passed the bill that gives authorities more powers to control social media content on July 29. The ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) and its ally Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) supported the bill, while the opposition parties objected to the argument that the legislation will lead to greater censorship in the country.

The CHP earlier indicated that they might apply to the Constitutional Court for social media regulation.

The law requires international social media platforms like Twitter and Facebook to appoint Turkish-based representatives to address authorities’ concerns over content and includes deadlines for removal of material they take exception to.

Companies could face fines, the blocking of advertisements or have bandwidth slashed by up to 90 percent, essentially blocking access, under the new regulations on cases such as if they fail to designate a representative or if the content that has been found unacceptable is not removed or blocked within 24 hours.

Administrative fines for providers who fail to meet obligations would be raised to encourage compliance. Previously, fines were between 10,000-100,000 Turkish Liras ($1,500 - $15,000), but the amount would now be between 1 million - 10 million Liras ($146,165 - $1,461,650).

If the representative will be a real entity, not a legal one, it has to be a Turkish citizen. The new legislation requires user data from social media networks to be stored in Turkey.