Professors Yaman Akdeniz and Kerem Altiparmak are cyber-law experts and internet rights activists who have campaigned vigorously against the Turkish government’s increasingly restrictive internet access laws. Together, they have raised repeated objections to the controversial Internet Law No 5651, which ostensibly blocked access to child pornography and other harmful content but has also been used to censor politically sensitive content such as pro-Kurdish or left-wing websites. It has been used to block around 50,000 websites.
In February 2014, then prime minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan increased the legislative reach of Law 5651, giving the country’s telecommunications authority (ICTA) more powers over Turkey’s internet users, such as storing user activity data for up to two years, or blocking URLs without court approval. Erdogan immediately made use of the latter opportunity by ordering the ICTA to block Twitter and YouTube in March 2014. Twitter had played a huge role in the escalation of Turkey’s Gezi Park demonstrations in 2013, during which many protesters were arrested and fined for posts to social media.
Social media channels were also being used to circulate damaging information about Erdogan and the AKP, his political party. Following revelations of widespread government corruption late in 2013, wiretapped phone conversations were leaked and spread via Twitter appearing to implicate Erdoğan and senior party members – one recording appears to include Erdogan telling his son to hide a large amount of cash.
He ordered the Twitter block in time to halt the spread of the injurious recordings before nationwide local elections at the end of March. Similarly, the YouTube block was instigated hours after a secret recording at Turkey’s foreign ministry, showing the government’s considerations for military involvement in Syria, was uploaded to the website.
In response to the blocks, Akdeniz and Altiparmak applied to the European Court of Human Rights to request an injunction against the ban. An administrative court in Ankara declared the ban illegal. After the government ignored this decision the pair applied to the highest court in Turkey, the Constitutional Court. Their case was successful, and Twitter was unblocked in April. Their advocacy efforts also helped lift the YouTube ban in June.
Despite their success, Akdeniz and Altiparmak say there is still a huge cause for concern. Even though Twitter and YouTube have now been unblocked, the legal framework for censorship has not been removed. In fact, as soon as Erdogan switched from prime minister to president in September 2014, he quietly slipped more amendments to 5651 through parliament, which allowed even more data logging and even quicker website blocking.
This week, prominent Bahraini human rights activist Nabeel Rajab was handed down a six month suspended sentence over a tweet in which both the country’s ministry of interior and ministry of defence allege that he “denigrated government institutions”. Rajab was only released last May after two years in prison, over charges that included sending offensive tweets. His experience is not unique in Bahrain. In May 2013, five men were arrested for “insulting the king” via Twitter.
A former Miss Turkey was recently arrested for sharing a satirical poem criticising the country’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on her Instagram account. She is set to go on trial later this year. Turkey has a chequered relationship with social media, temporarily banning both Twitter and YouTube in the wake of the Gezi Park protests, in large part organised and reported through social media. In 2013, authorities arrested 25 individuals for spreading “untrue information” on social media.
Saudi Arabia
(Photo: Gulf Centre for Human Rights)
In late 2014, women’s rights activist Souad Al-Shammari was arrested during an interrogation over some of her tweets. The charges against her include “calling upon society to disobey by describing society as masculine” and “using sarcasm while mentioning religious texts and religious scholars”, according to the Gulf Centre for Human Rights.
France
(Photo: Réseau Voltaire [CC BY-SA 3.0], via Wikimedia Commons)
Following the series of terrorist attacks in Paris in early January, at least 54 people have been detained by police for “defending or glorifying terrorism”. A number of the cases, including against comedian Dieudonne M’bala M’bala, are believe to be connected to social media comments.
Britain
A 22 year old man was arrested in for “malicious communication” following Facebook messages made in response to the murder of soldier Lee Rigby, and another user was arrested after taunting Olympic diver Tom Daly about his dead father. More recently, police arrested a 19-year-old man over an “offensive” tweet about a bin lorry crash in Glasgow that killed six people. TV personality Katie Hopkins, known for her controversial tweets, was also reported to Scottish police following some tasteless tweets about about Scots. The incident prompted Scottish police the to post their now infamous tweet declaring they would continue to “monitor comments on social media“.
China
Online activist Cheng Jianping was arrested on her wedding day in 2010 for “disturbing social order” by retweeting a joke by her fiance. She was sentenced to one year of “re-education through labour”. Twitter is officially banned in China, and microblogging site Weibo is a popular alternative. In 2013, four Weibo users were arrested for spreading rumours about a deceased soldier labelled a hero and used in propaganda posters. The four were said to have “incited dissatisfaction with the government”, according to the BBC.
Australia
A teen was arrested prior to attending a Pink concert in Melbourne for tweeting: “I’m ready with my Bomb. Time to blow up #RodLaverArena. Bitch.” The tweet referenced lyrics from the American popstar’s song Timebomb.
India
An Indian medical student was arrested in 2012 over a Facebook post questioning why her city of Mumbai should come to a standstill to mark the death of a prominent politician. Her friend was arrested for liking the post. Both were charged with engaging in speech that was offensive and hateful.
Back in 2009, a New York man was arrested, had his home searched and was placed under £19,000 bail for tweeting police movements to help G20 protesters in Pittsburgh avoid the officers. According to Global Voices, it is unclear whether his actions were actually illegal at the time.
A man was arrested in 2009 for causing “financial panic” by tweeting that Guatemalans should fight corruption by withdrawing all their money from banks.
Index on Censorship’s project to map media violations in the European Union and candidate countries has recorded 74 incidents in Turkey since May 2014.
Çağatay Gürtürk, owner of the collaborative dictionary website ITÜ Sözlük, was detained while trying to enter Turkey on the night of January 14. Authorities were investigating a posting on the site that allegedly “humiliating” to the Prophet Mohammed.
Gürtürk was released shortly after and published an open letter to the press on ITÜ Sözlük’s website saying that the website has been involved in lawsuits over the last ten years.
Gürtürk also wrote on the website, “The freedom to disseminate thought is a universal and constitutional right and people’s websites have become the most valuable tools in the world to use this freedom.”
Index on Censorship’s project to map media violations in the European Union and candidate countries has recorded 74 incidents in Turkey since May 2014.
Richard Howitt MEP is foreign affairs spokesperson for both the Labour Party and the Socialist and Democrat Group in the European Parliament and is a member of its joint parliamentary committee with the Turkish Parliament
As millions mourn the shooting of journalists in France, the European Parliament convening this week in Strasbourg today extended the fight for freedom of expression to legal threats, harassment and character assassination against free journalism in Turkey.
Indeed last weekend’s scenes reminded me of the hundreds of thousands who went on to the streets after the Turkish writer Hrant Dink was shot in 2007 and my deep regret that, despite the work of a foundation established by his widow, the situation in Turkey appears to have got worse not better in the intervening years.
A resolution voted for by MEPs was provoked by dawn police raids on newspapers and television stations in December that led to the arrest of 31 people, mainly journalists, on charges of terrorism – which carry some of the gravest sentences under the Turkish penal code.
Two of the leading journalists arrested openly admit sympathies for the US-based cleric Fethullah Gulen ,whose followers withdrew support from the country’s governing AKP party and whose so-called ‘movement’ does indeed deserve greater scrutiny.
Nevertheless reports suggest no evidence was presented of actual criminal intent against those arrested, with the crackdown fitting a pattern of legal harassment, smears and threats against those who provide political opposition to the government or who critically report on corruption allegations against it.
Our resolution also condemns the recent arrest of a Dutch journalist, demonstrating how foreign journalists are not exempt from attack.
Correspondents of The Economist, Der Spiegel and the New York Times in Turkey have all been threatened, with one CNN correspondent forced to flee the country after being accused of espionage.
Previous attempts to ban social media are also being revived in the country this week, in an apparent attempt to suppress reports Turkey’s intelligence organisation may have been implicated in the supply of arms to ISIS fighters in Syria.
As someone who is proud to call himself a friend of Turkey, and a keen proponent for the country’s accession to the EU, it is with a heavy heart I sign up to such criticisms.
However in negotiations I had to argue against opponents of the country seeking to use this latest incident to introduce wording that would have imposed immediate financial penalties against Turkey or put up new barriers in the membership negotiations.
I did so because politicians as well as journalists must not allow ourselves to be trapped in to self-censorship. On these arrests, it was our duty to speak out.
I am saddened explanations that the release of all but four of the journalists given to me and to my fellow MEPs by the Turkish representative in Strasbourg this week seemed wantonly to ignore the climate of fear and self-censorship which remains inflicted on the country’s press as a result.
It is the blatant denials that undermine trust and confidence with those of us who want to support reform efforts in the country, and which one very senior EU official told me had led to “desperation” in the telephone calls between Brussels and Ankara which followed the arrests.
Meanwhile, former prime minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, now elected as the country’s president, reacted characteristically by telling a news conference: “Nowhere in Europe or in other countries is there a media that is as free as the press in Turkey.”
The sober truth is that Turkey ranks 154 out of 180 in press freedom according to the Reporters Without Borders index last year.
The annual survey by the Committee to Protect Journalists, published only last month, showed Turkey amongst the top ten countries in the world for imprisoning journalists, ranking alongside Azerbaijan, Iran and China.
However, Erdogan’s protestations must be put in to a context where he also rebuffed European criticisms of the arrests saying the EU should “mind its own business”, and last week when he was prepared to partly attribute the Charlie Hebdo terrorist attack to “Western hypocrisy”.
Today’s European Parliament vote ascribes that hypocrisy instead to the government in Ankara.
I wonder whether the Turkish press will fairly report even this?
![(Photo: « Source : Réseau Voltaire » [CC BY-SA 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons](https://www.indexoncensorship.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/Dieudonné_Axis_for_Peace_2005-11-18.jpg)
