Turkey, the world’s worst jailer of journalists, continues its crackdown on dissident voices.
Turkey has introduced new legal provisions, which controls and monitors use of social media platforms. Social media is currently the main channel for opponents and campaigners, and these new rules threaten the existence of social media platforms in the country both through costly fines and bandwidth restrictions up to 95 percent.
According to the legislation, social media platforms are obligated to have a representative in Turkey and these representatives have to share the IP addresses or user information upon request. The basic aim of this regulation is to make it impossible for the dissidents to be anonymous on social media.
Until today blocking access to the URL addresses was the main tool for censorship but from now on search engines and content providers can be forced to delete information.
This regulation is both a violation of freedom of expression and also a direct restriction of the right to access information.
