- summary
- Law No. 7253 amended Law No. 5651 to require all social media platforms with more than one million daily users to appoint a Turkish legal representative, store data of Turkish users on servers in Turkey, and remove content within 48 hours of notification. Non-compliance triggered 50% to 90% bandwidth throttling and advertising bans. Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, TikTok, and others initially refused but complied after throttling was implemented. Law extended BTK's content removal authority to include platform-level liability.
- country
- Turkey
- date text
- 31/07/2020
- entities
- Grand National Assembly; BTK (Information Technologies Authority); RTÜK
- entity type
- Legislature; State Regulatory Body
- id
- 1117
- name
- Grand National Assembly; BTK (Information Technologies Authority); RTÜK
- role
- actor
- Social media platforms; journalists; civil society communicators; online news sites
- entity type
- Media; CSO; Individual
- id
- 1118
- name
- Social media platforms; journalists; civil society communicators; online news sites
- role
- target
- Grand National Assembly; BTK (Information Technologies Authority); RTÜK
- sources
- citation
- TUSEV CSO Monitoring Matrix Turkey 2020-2021; Law No. 7253 (31 July 2020); BTK enforcement records
- tactics
- Legislative Operationalization
- label
- Legislative Operationalization
- code
- TC-18
- needs review
- false
- role
- primary
- Media Distribution Exclusion
- label
- Media Distribution Exclusion
- code
- TC-41
- needs review
- false
- role
- secondary
- Legislative Operationalization
- narratives
- Sovereignty Protection / State Security Infrastructure
- label
- Sovereignty Protection / State Security Infrastructure
- code
- NF-10
- needs review
- false
- role
- primary
- Destabilization Agent
- label
- Destabilization Agent
- code
- NF-06
- needs review
- false
- role
- secondary
- Sovereignty Protection / State Security Infrastructure
- campaign ids
- campaign phase
- Phase 2: Institutionalization of Mechanism
- channels
- BTK
- court orders
- Parliament
- RTÜK
- civic response
- Platforms initially refused and accepted throttling; digital rights groups documented chilling effects; RSF and CPJ issued alerts; all platforms ultimately complied
- consequence category
- Digital Censorship; Regulatory Compliance Burden; Platform Capture
- created at
- 2026-09-24T17:50:55.358311+00:00
- date precision
- day
- escalation
- 4
- harm track
- Track 2 — Information Environment
- id
- TUR-032
- institutional consequence
- All major global platforms now operating under Turkish jurisdiction with local representative liable for content removal; Turkish users' data held locally; government content removal compliance rate increased significantly
- notes
- First stage of two-part information criminalisation campaign; second stage is TUR-043 (Law 7418 disinformation law)
- occurred on
- 2020-07-31
- trigger type
- TR-08: Proactive / Ambient
- updated at
- 2026-09-24T17:50:55.358311+00:00
- version
- 1
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