Turkey brings in vetting of Internet broadcast providers

Turkey brings in vetting of Internet broadcast providers
Erdogan is looming larger and larger over the lives of ordinary citizens in Turkey. / Eminn.
By bne IntelliNews March 22, 2018

Turkey’s radio and TV watchdog will be empowered with the right to vet Internet broadcasts following the passing of legislation by the country’s parliament on March 22. The move gives the government the ability to intervene against content by producers including streaming media and video-on-demand company Netflix.

Online video streaming companies and pay-TV services must apply for a licence from the RTUK regulator, according to the regulation voted through by lawmakers. Courts can prevent Turkish users from obtaining access to a service that has not secured the necessary permit. RTUK is well known for dishing out penalties or banning broadcasts in relation to content it has assessed as immoral, not in harmony with Turkish family values or not in tune with government policies.

Five of the nine members on RTUK’s governing council are appointed by the ruling party, presently President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s Justice and Development Party (AKP). The move to vet Internet broadcasts will do nothing to temper criticism from Eurocrats, among others, who see Erdogan, in power for 15 years, as allowing Turkey to slide towards becoming an authoritarian state.

In the 20 months since a state of emergency has held sway over the country in the wake of the failed military coup—providing Erdogan with special powers that allow him to rule by decree—courts and government agencies have become renowned for blocking access to Twitter and YouTube in response to complaints of content deemed offensive to the nation’s leadership; online encyclopedia Wikipedia has been blocked; a great number of journalists have been arrested in purges aimed at pursuing anyone seen as allied with the “Gulenist network” the government holds responsible for attempting the coup and Turkey has been ranked as the worst country in the world for jailing news reporters; scores of media outlets have been closed down and business holdings seen as loyal to Erdogan have moved to acquire media, including, this week, respected newspaper Hurriyet and CNN Turk.

Twitter, meanwhile, says Turkey submits around half of all requests for the removal of tweets, far more than any other country.

Global rights group Freedom House, based in Washington, DC, this year changed its ranking for Turkey from “Partly Free” to “Not Free” for the first time.

Under the new legislation, hypothetically any individual among Turkey’s population of 80 million who posts a video on the Internet should be exempt from RTUK oversight. Vague wording in the text of the law, however, does not at all make that a foregone conclusion, according to Ilhan Tasci, an RTUK governing council member appointed by the main opposition party, the CHP.

“If someone’s video is seen by 100,000 people, will RTUK consider this as an individual activity or consider it as a real broadcast?” Bloomberg reported Tasci as saying by phone. “In no developed democracy can governments decide on what adults can watch.”

The news agency reported that there remained some doubt among governing council members as to whether the new regulation would cover free video streaming providers such as YouTube.

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