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would be rendered unusable in Turkey.
In November and December, the Turkish government fined Facebook, along with its Instagram platform, as well as Twitter, YouTube and TikTok under the first two steps of punishment outlined by the new law after they did not appoint the required representatives.
Facebook has around 37mn subscribers in Turkey, a country of 83mn. The Facebook personnel that deal with Turkey are based in London.
Facebook’s Instagram has 39mn Turkish subscribers.
Twitter has 14mn users in Turkey while the country is among TikTok’s largest markets, providing it with around 30mn subscribers.
The number of Netflix subscribers in Turkey rose to more than 3mn in December from around 1.5mn in 2019.
In December, Turkey fined Amazon’s country representative Turkish lira (TRY) 1.2mn ($0.2mn) right after they were appointed.
Turkish judges “issue approximately 12,000 internet blocking and removal decisions each year, and over 450,000 websites and 140,000 URLs are currently blocked from Turkey.”
“Even when the Constitutional Court finds a violation as in the cases of Wikipedia, Sendika.Org, and others, the lower courts constantly ignore the decisions of the Constitutional Court.”
All of the members of the constitutional court have been appointed during the era of Erdogan’s Justice and Development Party (AKP) and the lower courts have a habit of ignoring its decisions in other fields too, giving credence to those who say Turkey has become little more than a banana republic.
Turkish authorities “regularly arrest social-media users”.
Turkish competition board and personal data protection board KVKK have launched probes against Facebook over the way it informed its subscribers as regards a change in its data privacy policy in relation to its messaging service WhatsApp. The Turkish government appears to be using the situation to instrumentalise some of its social media demands.
Russia’s Telegram Messenger, which Erdogan has begun to use instead of WhatsApp in his chat groups with journalists, is the most popular replacement for WhatsApp among Turks followed by the US’ Signal.
Local messenger apps are also attempting to promote themselves amid the WhatsApp hullabaloo but they have little chance given the data privacy and freedom of speech conditions in Turkey.
In 2020, Turkey easily kept its unrivalled leading position in Twitter censorship demands, with the closest challengers Japan and Russia.
On January 13, Turkey’s Radio and Television Supreme Council (RTUK) again fined pro-main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP) TV channels Halk TV and TELE 1.
Also, Turkcell said on January 11 that its BiP was downloaded 4.6mn times in three days while government-run defence company Havelsan promoted its Havelsan Ileti and BtiDer (an information technologies and data privacy association) promoted its Dedi.
47 TURKEY Country Report February 2021 www.intellinews.com
