Turkey cracking down even more on internet freedoms

Ali Rajab

The government of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan restricts access to the internet across Turkey. This comes as the popularity of Erdogan’s ruling party hits rock bottom.

Internet freedoms shrank in Turkey last year after Turkish authorities banned social media sites temporarily in the wake of formulating legislation that imposed restrictions on social media companies.

The authorities also tightened the noose around freedom of speech and arrested a large number of journalists and bloggers, according to a report about internet freedoms in the period between June 2019 and May 2020.

Turkey has been seeing a drop in internet freedoms since last year. These freedoms dropped two points, having reached 35 from 100 points, according to a report by Freedom.

It said more independent media platforms had been banned in Turkey on requests by the Turkish government.

The report noted that hundreds of social media users had been arrested and put in prison on charges of spreading false news on the coronavirus outbreak in the country.

The courts continued to sentence journalists and opposition activists to prison, Freedom House said in its report.

It added that these journalists and opposition activists had been imprisoned against the background of material they published on the internet.

In July this year, Turkey approved a new law that makes foreign social media sites more prone to questioning by the authorities. The law makes it necessary for these sites to appoint a local representative to address any fears or inquiries by the Turkish government.

Turkish has tightened control over social media sites, which puts Twitter and Facebook in a difficult situation in this country.