The real aim is to silence the opposition
Politics Service
The government, which tailors all its strategies to the election, is also redesigning the media and communication tools to suit its own needs. Anyone who speaks out, objects, or criticises the government and its policies is being targeted. The Palace administration, seeking to prolong the regime’s lifespan, is effectively clearing the way through the laws it has enacted. On the one hand, social media regulations; on the other, the ‘disinformation’ law; and yet again, the RTÜK stick is being used to put pressure on all news outlets.
Justice Minister Akın Gürlek stated last week that, as part of the social media regulations, users would be required to verify their Turkish ID via e-Government when opening an account, adding that whilst users could use usernames, their identity details would be stored in the system. Family and Social Services Minister Mahinur Özdemir Göktaş also spoke about the new regulations during a live broadcast yesterday.
Minister Göktaş said, “Regulations on social media for children under 15 have been long awaited. Within this framework, whilst introducing controls for those under 15, we are also imposing an obligation to provide age-appropriate content for young people aged 15–18.” Touching on the technical details of the regulations, Göktaş added: “We will carry out age verification using a model specific to our country, via the e-Government portal, so that our children’s data will be protected within our own system without leaving the country.”
Although the new regulation is justified on the grounds of ‘protecting children’, it is claimed that it will create a system of surveillance and self-censorship for social media users who criticise the government and its policies. CHP Eskişehir MP Utku Çakırözer also stated that the regulation imposes significant digital isolation and surveillance on 86 million people, saying: “The truth is already obscured in Turkey. Every year, tens of thousands of news articles and content are blocked because numerous ruling party members—including the President, his family, ministers, MPs, governors, district governors and bureaucrats—find them objectionable.”
SOCIAL SURVEILLANCE
Academic Gökhan Bulut, sharing his views on the matter with BirGün, said, “The regulation regarding the 15-year-old age limit mentioned by Justice Minister Akın Gürlek is being portrayed as having an ‘indisputable’ justification, such as the protection of children and ensuring digital security. However, given the political establishment’s track record on media and freedom of expression, it is not difficult to predict that new restrictions and surveillance await us.”
Bulut made the following assessment: “Looking back, the picture we see is this: mainstream media has been ‘co-opted’, whilst the remaining institutions, viewpoints and practices have been ‘marginalised’. Like journalism, social media—the place where the public comes closest to participating in broad public debate—has already been viewed as a ‘crime scene’ for many years. This regulation is also set to further suppress and marginalise social media use. As with any regulation concerning the media in general, and social media in particular, it can already be said that this will constitute an intervention that curtails freedom of expression.
Measures may be taken to protect children, but these cannot be achieved solely through prohibitive and surveillance-focused tools. The notion that the inclusion of control mechanisms such as access restrictions and identity verification serves the primary purpose of enhancing the state’s surveillance capacity rather than security is a well-established prediction.
APPLIED TO EVERYONE
The emergence of identity verification measures, in particular, carries the risk of narrowing the space for anonymous expression. Yet anonymity is not merely an individual choice; it is also a safeguard for sustaining public participation in repressive environments. To curtail this safeguard amounts to directly targeting freedom of expression. Especially when we recall how the so-called “censorship law”—which was supposedly “not to be applied to journalists”—was in fact applied to journalists and thousands of citizens.
Consequently, the fundamental issue here is that we can see how this regulation, presented under theoretically legitimate objectives such as protecting children, will fail to achieve those objectives and will primarily be used to suppress anti-government views.
In conclusion, social media regulations can, of course, be implemented for the public good; however, in Turkey, such regulations are rightly met with scepticism due to the current government’s track record in the media sector. The “15-year-old age limit”, too, cannot be assessed outside of these conditions, however innocent and legitimate the stated aims may seem.”
PUNISHMENT HAS BECOME A THREAT
EMEP Istanbul MP İskender Bayhan and Gaziantep MP Sevda Karaca had submitted a bill to the Presidency of the Turkish Grand National Assembly calling for the repeal of Article 217/A, which was added to the Turkish Penal Code (TCK) and described by civil society organisations and the opposition as the ‘censorship law’ or the ‘disinformation law’.
AKP Group Executive Committee Member Ejder Açıkkapı, however, had stated that they would continue with the disinformation law.
Arguing that the fight against disinformation has now gone beyond traditional communication policies, Açıkkapı made the following remarks:
“The fight against disinformation is not merely a communication policy; it is also a matter of national security. Strategic communication, crisis management and the protection of truth are now fundamental elements of the new security architecture.”
Note: This article is translated from the original article titled Asıl amaç muhalif tabanı susturmak, published in BirGün newspaper on April 28, 2026.
To read the full story from the source: BirGün
