• Population: 70,318,000
  • Internet users: 4,900,000 (2002)
  • Average charge for 20 hours of connection: 14 euros
  • DAI*: 0.48
  • Situation**: difficult

Legal reforms to prepare for the country's membership of the European Union have not led to any real improvement in press or Internet freedom. Despite some relaxation, it is still dangerous to criticise the government or the army and the line between what is tolerated and what is not, between "criticism" and "insults," is still very fluid in the eyes of the courts.

The police have a special brigade that monitors Internet activity and Ankara police have an Internet division, as do the country's regions.

No legislation refers specifically to the Internet, but the May 2002 law on the National Broadcasting Council (RTÜK) imposed severe restrictions on freedom of expression on the Internet, with webpages requiring approval by the authorities before being posted. Courts tend to treat Internet cases under the country's very repressive media laws.

Can institutions be criticised online?

Article 159 of the criminal code is often used to silence critics of the army and the government. Several webmasters have been prosecuted under it for "insulting the state and its institutions and making threats to the indivisible unity of the Turkish republic." It was amended in June 2003 and the prison term for this offence was halved, from a year to six months, and the decriminalisation in 2002 of criticism not intended to "ridicule" or "insult" state institutions was maintained. But a judge's opinion of what "criticism" is remains very subjective.

Coskun Ak, coordinator of interactivity at the firm Superonline, was sentenced on 23 March 2000 to three years and four months in prison for "insulting and making fun of the state, the armed forces, the police and the judiciary." He had left on the firm's website in May 1999 an item about human rights violations in southeastern Turkey, which had been posted on the site's discussion forum by a participant. The sentence was commuted to a fine on 12 March 2002.

The chief appeals court said on 8 January 2003 that the lower court should have made a distinction between criticism and insults. Ak had been convicted under article 159 (1) (before it was amended in June 2003). He was acquitted on 24 April 2003 by the Istanbul assize court.

Cybercafés monitored

Cybercafé owners were ordered in December 2003 to install filters to block access to pornographic websites and to prevent their premises being used to promote gambling, pornography, political separatism or any challenge to the structure of the state. Two-thirds of Internet activity in Turkey is through the country's 15,000 or so cybercafés.

Two websites blocked

An Ankara court shut down the website www.ekmekveadalet.com on 21 May 2003 for carrying material "insulting and making fun of the armed forces." The site is the online version of the far-left weekly Ekmek ve Adalet (Bread and Justice), which the authorities say is the organ of the armed wing of the banned Revolutionary Party and Front for the Liberation of the Turkish People (DHKPC). The court also blocked the website of the pro-Kurdish weekly Özgur Politika, www.ozgurpolitika.org, the same day, also under article 159. The sites can still be accessed through proxy sites or anonymizers.

Pressure from Turkish Telekom

The state-run Turkish Telekom, which controls Internet access, cut off the lines of ISPs in Izmir for several days in September 2003 to punish them for selling cheap online phone calls that compete with normal phone services. This was criticised by the Internet Association, which pointed out that the national constitution forbade Turkish Telekom to concern itself with how people used their Internet connections.

Links

* The DAI (Digital Access Index) has been devised by the International Telecommunications Union to measure the access of a country's inhabitants to information and communication technology. It ranges from 0 (none at all) to 1 (complete access).

** Assessment of the situation in each country (good, middling, difficult, serious) is based on murders, imprisonment or harassment of cyber-dissidents or journalists, censorship of news sites, existence of independent news sites, existence of independent ISPs and deliberately high connection charges.

Disclaimer:

This is not a UNHCR publication. UNHCR is not responsible for, nor does it necessarily endorse, its content. Any views expressed are solely those of the author or publisher and do not necessarily reflect those of UNHCR, the United Nations or its Member States.