The government of Turkey's president Ragab Tayyeb Erdogan plans to introduce prison sentences of one to five years for publishing and spreading fake news on social media.
Last month, Erdogan said that his Justice and Development Party AKP was working on a new law to tackle what he called “the terror of lies.”
The new law will introduce the offenses of “disinformation” and “misinformation. It also includes the establishment of a regulatory body called the “Presidency of Social Media,”
Turkey’s regulatory bodies for print and broadcast media are widely accused of using their authorities to punish media outlets critical of the government.
In the first half of the year, 22 administrative penalties were issued against several TV outlets, all of which are known for their critical coverage of the government.
In the last year, newspapers critical of the government got 88 percent of all ad cuts and penalties imposed by the Press Advertisement Institution (BİK), the authority responsible for placing public ads and announcements in newspapers.
Turkey enacted its first “social media law” last year, obligating all major platforms to assign legal representatives and store their users’ data in the country.
The AKP government has been relentless in its crackdown on critical media outlets particularly after a coup attempt on July 15, 2016.
As an overwhelming majority of the country’s mainstream media has come under government control over the last decade, Turks have taken to social media and smaller online news outlets for critical voices and independent news.
Turks are already heavily policed on social media, and many have been charged with insulting the Turkish President or his ministers, or criticism related to foreign military incursions and the handling of the coronavirus pandemic.
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