ISTANBUL, Turkey - Turkey is going through a freedom of expression and censorship debate, after parliament approved a bill tightening Internet controls, and an Azerbaijani journalist was expelled for Tweets the government said had “exceeded the limits of criticism.”
The new amendments to laws regulating Internet publications include powers allowing Turkey's telecommunications authority to block websites without first seeking a court ruling, stirring national and international debates.
They would force Internet providers to store data on web users' activities for two years and make it available to the authorities.
The new amendments, passed last week by parliament, now await ratification by President Abdullah Gul, who is under pressure to veto the legislation.
The government said the amendments to the 2007 law, which is already held to be one of the most restrictive in the world, are necessary for greater protection of privacy, children, the young and families.
But the opposition, the public and others have criticised the move as an assault on freedom of expression.
Last Saturday, hundreds of demonstrators took to the streets in protest, and Turkish riot police used water cannon and tear gas at hundreds of demonstrators marching in Istanbul.
Irmak Ozinanır, a communications researcher at Ankara University, noted that Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan has been openly critical of the Internet, calling Twitter a "scourge" and condemning social media as "the worst menace to society."
Both Twitter and Facebook were widely used by anti-government protesters to spread information during widespread demonstrations last year.
“The new regulations are a follow-up to the government’s attitude that has particularly become observable during the Gezi Park demonstrations, Ozinanir said, referring to demonstrations around Turkey last year that were ignited by a controversy over a public park in Istanbul.
“Under the new legislation every Internet user is a potential criminal, and so it (the law) paves the way for every kind of intervention to all sorts of content,” he added.
Ozinanır believes that greater state regulation of Internet content will curtail the public’s access to unbiased news.
He cited government censorship of a December 2011 airstrike by the Turkish military near the village of Roboski, which killed 34 Kurdish villagers, and a police crackdown of the Gezi Park protests. In both cases, he noted, many people learned of the events through social media.
“Everybody should carefully asses the costs of enacting this bill,” said Faruk Eczacıbasi, head of the Turkey Informatics Foundation, at a news conference.
“Nobody, no investor, would like to invest in a repressive country, where investment, data flows are strictly overseen,” said Eczacıbası, himself a prominent businessman.
The timing of the legislation, which comes as Erdogan deals with a serious graft scandal that erupted in December and implicates his inner circle, has also draw suspicions.
Critics fear it is part of a larger crackdown on the media and Internet.
Earlier this month, the government expelled Mahir Zeynalov, an Azerbaijani journalist working for Turkey’s Today’s Zaman newspaper, for some controversial Tweets.
According to an Interior Ministry order, he had “exceeded the limits of criticism” and was placed on a blacklist of foreigners barred from entering Turkey.
His deportation order came a month after Erdogan filed a criminal complaint against him for tweeting links to articles about the corruption scandal.
Erdogan has portrayed the investigation as a plot against him by people within the Turkish police and judiciary loyal to Fethullah Gulen, a self-exiled Islamic preacher living in the United States.
Haluk Kalafat, editor-in-chief of bianet, the oldest web-based independent news outlet in Turkey, believes the aim of the legislation is to block any publication of documents that could endanger the rule of Erdogan’s AKP party.
“They fear if there is anything that would discredit the government,” he said. “Recently the Gulen movement has exposed all the tapping and discrediting information it has collected,” Kalafat added.
“For our own part, we are not worried for any kind of closure or interruption with our publication,” he said, adding that bianet had been very careful with its journalism.
Kalafat noted that, around the world, governments are trying for greater curbs on the Internet, including in the United States, where Google has sometimes been forced to remove content.
Human Rights Watch said the restrictions in Turkey raise concerns that a “defensive government is seeking to increase its power to silence critics and to arbitrarily limit politically damaging material online.”
The controversial bill has been criticized and condemned by several international organizations, including Freedom House, as well as by Turkish academics and opposition groups.
Turkish academics Kerem Altıparmak and Yaman Akdeniz have released a report evaluating all aspects and possible effects of the controversial law.
“The only objective of this regulation, which has been prepared in panic, hastily, disregarding the public opinion, is obviously to suppress the Internet media which facilitates the dissemination of the successive corruption news” the report reads.
Meanwhile, Erdogan has vehemently rejected criticism of the new curbs and denied accusations of censorship, saying the legislation would make the internet "more safe and free."
He has denied that authorities would have access to Internet users’ personal information. “Never. It is out of the question that people’s private data will be recorded,” he said.
Turkish opposition parties have called on the government to scrap the new bill, saying it would severely limit Internet free speech.
Kemal Kilicdaroglu, head of the Republican People’s Party (CHP), told reporters in Istanbul that, “No country, which is trying to establish democracy, has taken refuge in bans.
He said that the AKP “is obviously scared and wants to obstruct some information from the public, so they enforce bans.”
