Many Turks, old and young alike, have learned how to avoid the government’s bans on news websites and online media, particularly as the crucial 2023 elections draw near, Dorian Jones wrote for Radio France Internationale on Saturday.
“Turkey ranks among the world’s worst for press freedom. But years of censorship and control are creating a population increasingly adept at bypassing such restrictions,” he wrote.
Internet censorship saw a significant tick upward in the 2010s, Jones said citing union news website Sendika.org’s editor Ali Ergin Demirhan. The year 2015 marked the first time Sendika.org was banned, along with 107 other websites, he said.
Most recently, Voice of America and Deutsche Welle’s Turkish language services were banned by Turkey’s media watchdog Radio and Television Supreme Council (RTÜK) in June, over noncompliance with changes to laws on online media.
Laws governing the Internet and online publishing have changed 18 times over the last 15 years, technology consultant Füsun Nebil told Jones.
Many Turks have learned how to use virtual private networks (VPNs), secure browsers such as Tor, or web proxies.
As VPNs help circumvent most of the bans, the government has its sights set on them too.
After the failed coup attempt of July 15, 2016, VPNs were banned in an amendment to laws that is still in place, analyst Atilla Yeşilada told Jones. However, as businesses have legitimate need for VPN services, the ban is not strictly enforced, he said.
Overall, the government “seems to be losing” the cat-and-mouse game with Turkey’s Internet denizens, Jones continued. Banned websites often use simple changes to their domain names, such as adding a number, to circumvent URL based bans, and social media platforms help in relaying the new domains to users.
However, as presidential and parliamentary elections scheduled for June 2023 draw near, the government has increased the crackdown, Demirhan said. “They select certain journalists and media outlets on the basis that they are disseminating information that the government doesn’t want, and (those) get punished and blocked.”
The ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) and President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan have been down in polls, amid foreign and domestic policy crises, several conflicts Turkey is involved in, and the growing economic crisis and exploding inflation. As more than 90 percent of traditional and mainstream media have come under direct or indirect government control, audiences increasingly turn towards smaller Internet media for news not filtered through the government’s lens.
Ahval