In her article at Al-Monitor, Nazlan Ertan underlines that the incumbent will continue to support what has been termed the “Censorship Law” despite international warnings and the opposition’s efforts to stop the bill.
Turkey is debating what has been termed the censorship bill, which provides an outline for extensive censorship of online information and the criminalisation of potential journalistic activities. The bill has been submitted to the parliament with the claim of the AKP (Justice and Development Party) and the MHP (Nationalist Movement Party) to fight what they termed ‘disinformation’ and is composed of 40-articles. The first 14 articles were approved this week.
In her article published at Al Monitor, Ertan points out how the bill has been met with international scepticism building on previous measures on the restrictions on independent media and how it can be utilised to silence the opposition. As the article underlines: “Turkey already tightened controls on the internet in 2020 with registration requirements for social media companies and forces platforms to remove violating content within 48 hours.”
Ertan also underlines how adding the phrase of “distributing deceptive information publicly” to the penal code is interpreted as a threat to independent media as it “gives the administration new powers to sanction the media with fines, advertising bans and bandwidth throttling”.
Moreover, citing the Media for Democracy Project of the Ankara-based Association of Journalists report, Ertan shares that in 2021:
- 241 journalists stood trial
- 73 journalists were detained
- A radio broadcaster was killed
- 115 journalists were physically attacked.
You can read the whole article at Al-Monitor. To access the article, click here.