Three and a half years after Turkey's parliament added Article 217/A to the Penal Code through Law No. 7418 — the so-called 'disinformation law' enacted in October 2022 — the chilling effects on Turkish online speech are no longer theoretical. Prosecutors have used the provision, which punishes 'publicly disseminating misleading information' with one to three years' imprisonment, to open hundreds of investigations against journalists, opposition politicians, and ordinary social media users. Combined with successive amendments to Law No. 5651 (Turkey's foundational internet regulation, originally passed in 2007), the country's Information and Communication Technologies Authority (BTK) now possesses some of the broadest blocking and bandwidth-throttling powers of any democracy.
The Constitutional Court is currently considering applications challenging Article 217/A's compatibility with Article 26 of the Turkish Constitution (freedom of expression) and Article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights. The Court's eventual ruling will be one of the most consequential free-speech decisions in Turkey's recent history.
How the Disinformation Crime Works
Article 217/A criminalises the public dissemination of 'false information concerning the country's domestic and foreign security, public order and general health' in a manner 'suitable for disturbing public peace.' Crucially, the law does not define 'misleading information' or specify any objective standard for falsity. Sentences increase by up to half if the offender conceals their identity or acts on behalf of an organisation — a provision that effectively penalises the use of pseudonymous accounts, a long-standing pillar of online speech.
The vagueness is not an accident. As the Venice Commission warned in its October 2022 opinion on the draft law, criminalising 'disinformation' without a clearly bounded definition 'risks creating a chilling effect on freedom of expression and journalistic freedom in particular' and is incompatible with Article 10 ECHR standards on legal certainty. The Council of Europe explicitly recommended that Turkey withdraw the criminal provision and rely instead on civil remedies and media-literacy initiatives.
Law No. 5651: Blocking Without a Judge
Layered on top of the criminal provision is Turkey's longstanding internet law, Law No. 5651, repeatedly expanded since 2014. The current framework allows BTK and presidential authorities to:
- Issue blocking orders against URLs, domains, or entire platforms on grounds including 'national security' and 'public order,' often without prior judicial review.
- Throttle bandwidth to social media platforms — effectively rendering them unusable while avoiding the political optics of a full block.
- Compel 'social network providers' with more than one million Turkish users to appoint local representatives, store user data domestically, and remove flagged content within 48 hours.
- Impose escalating advertising bans and bandwidth restrictions of up to 90% on non-compliant platforms.
The bandwidth-throttling power has been used repeatedly. According to NetBlocks measurements, Turkish users have experienced throttling or full blocks affecting X, Instagram, YouTube, Discord, and WhatsApp during sensitive news moments — most notably during the February 2023 earthquake response, when X was throttled at the very moment families were using it to coordinate rescues.
The Constitutional Court Test
The pending constitutional challenge focuses on three core defects identified by petitioners: the absence of a precise definition of 'misleading information,' the disproportionality of imprisonment as a response to alleged falsehood, and the law's failure to require any showing of actual harm beyond a vague 'suitability to disturb public peace.' These concerns mirror those raised by the European Court of Human Rights in Yıldırım v. Turkey (2012), where Strasbourg found that wholesale blocking under Law No. 5651 violated Article 10 because it lacked any framework limiting authorities' discretion.
A Constitutional Court ruling that strikes down or narrows Article 217/A would not end Turkey's enforcement architecture, but it would mark the first significant domestic check on the post-2022 expansion of state speech powers. A ruling that upholds the provision, by contrast, would entrench a model that the Council of Europe and OSCE Representative on Freedom of the Media have repeatedly described as incompatible with democratic standards.
Why Proportionate Regulation Matters
None of this is to deny that genuine online harms exist. Coordinated influence operations, fraud, and incitement to violence are real problems that warrant policy response. But the choice between 'do nothing' and 'imprison people for vague speech offences' is a false one. Proportionate alternatives — transparency obligations on platforms, well-resourced independent fact-checking ecosystems, narrowly drawn defamation remedies, and procedural safeguards requiring judicial review before blocking — can address abuse without handing the executive a blunt instrument that can be (and has been) turned against political opposition, journalists, and minority communities.
The economic stakes are also significant. Turkey's startup and creator economy depends on access to global platforms; every escalation of the blocking regime degrades the country's standing as a digital hub and pushes commerce, advertising, and talent toward jurisdictions with clearer rules. The compliance costs imposed on platforms by the local-representative and data-localisation requirements further raise barriers to entry for smaller competitors, entrenching incumbent dominance — the opposite of the competitive, innovative digital market most policymakers say they want.
What Comes Next
The Constitutional Court's ruling is the immediate flashpoint, but even a favourable decision would leave Law No. 5651's blocking architecture largely intact. A durable settlement requires legislative reform that introduces meaningful judicial oversight of blocking orders, a clearer definition of any speech-based offence, and proportionality requirements modelled on EU Digital Services Act-style transparency rather than criminal liability. Until then, Turkey will continue to offer the world a cautionary example of how 'fighting disinformation' becomes a slogan for something much narrower: controlling what citizens are allowed to say online.