On 7 November 2026, Turkish media reported that RTÜK, the Radio and Television Supreme Council, had sent a draft regulation to the AK Party parliamentary group. According to those reports, the draft would count digital platforms' Turkish subscription revenue when calculating administrative fines under Article 32 of Law No. 6112. Fines are currently pegged to declared commercial communication (advertising and sponsorship) revenue, which is a small part of what Netflix, Disney+, Prime Video and HBO Max earn from subscribers. I could not retrieve the draft itself, so the details below rest on press accounts. The reports say it sits alongside a separate Digital Copyright Law and complaints from local broadcasters about uneven obligations. They do not describe any local-content quota.
The best case for the draft
The regulator's argument is easy to state. A penalty only deters if it hurts. If a platform's fine is a percentage of advertising income, and its main business is subscriptions, the fine can be a rounding error. In September 2025, Turkish Minute reported that RTÜK fined Netflix, Prime Video, Disney XD, MUBI and HBO Max "3 percent of their advertising revenue" for individual titles, and ordered those titles removed. A base that ignores most of the revenue earned in Turkey looks like an accidental discount. Local broadcasters, who face the same rules on a much larger advertising base, have a fair point about parity.
That argument has real force. Proportionality cuts both ways: a regulator should not be forced to choose between a token fine and a licence cancellation.
Why a bigger base is the wrong place to start
The trouble is what the larger fine would be attached to. The 2025 sanctions did not punish a missed obligation. They punished content: RTÜK said the films conflicted with "national and moral values" and the protection of the family, according to the same Turkish Minute report. The report also cites the Media Freedom Rapid Response monitoring group, which counted 46 RTÜK sanctions in the first half of 2025, 42 of them on critical outlets.
A regime in which the regulator decides case by case what is morally acceptable, and the fine scales with the platform's whole Turkish business, raises the stakes of every content decision. Platforms will rationally over-comply. They will decline to commission or license anything that might trigger a complaint. That is a speech cost, and it falls hardest on independent Turkish producers whose work is least predictable.
A sound platform regime would pair penalties with defined duties. Today the duties are mostly licensing and conduct rules. Law No. 6112, adopted on 15 February 2011, was extended by an amendment dated 21 March 2018 that added Article 29/A. As Gün + Partners summarises it, that article requires online media service providers, including those domiciled abroad that broadcast in Turkey, to hold an RTÜK licence. Licences go only to joint stock companies with a physical presence in Turkey. Providers charging subscribers also pay a levy of 0.5% of net annual sales, and the licence fee for internet TV or on-demand services was TRY 100,000 at the time of that note.
The missing piece: a quota
None of the descriptions of the regime I reviewed mention a local-content or domestic-production requirement for on-demand services. Law 6112 does define "European works" in its Article 3, but I could not confirm any operative quota built on that definition for streaming services. Nor does the 2024 package of amendments, which a Legal 500 summary of the Inal Law Office note says took effect on 13 January 2024, address one. That package mostly tightened licensing: online broadcasting was brought explicitly into the definitions, and providers that fail to complete procedures within 72 hours can face content-removal requests to a criminal court of peace.
That leaves a lopsided picture. Turkey has a defined licence, a defined levy and a growing fine base. It has no stated positive obligation that explains what a platform is meant to be doing for Turkish audiences or producers. Local broadcasters complain about uneven obligations, and the draft answers by raising penalties, not by clarifying duties.
A quota is not automatically the answer. Content quotas can work when they are modest, count a wide range of qualifying works, and come with investment-based alternatives. They fail when they are rigid, because platforms satisfy them with cheap filler or withdraw catalogue. Whether a Turkish quota would help depends on three design choices. First, who decides what counts as local: a statutory definition, or a regulator that also polices morality. Second, whether platforms can meet the target through co-production spending instead of title counts. Third, whether the obligation is transparent enough to be challenged in court. The first choice is the dangerous one. A quota enforced by the same body that removes titles for "moral values" would give RTÜK a lever over what gets commissioned, not just what gets shown.
What a proportionate version looks like
- Keep the fine tied to the violation. If subscription revenue enters the base, set a statutory cap and a proportionality test. The regulator should explain how the amount relates to the gravity of the breach.
- Separate content takedown from financial penalties. Fining a platform on its whole Turkish revenue for a single title invites self-censorship.
- If a quota is introduced, legislate it. Define qualifying works in the statute, allow investment-based compliance, and subject decisions to judicial review.
- Consult before adopting. The draft moved to a parliamentary group before a public comment round, according to the reports. A regulation that changes the economics of every streaming service deserves a published text and a comment period.
The local-broadcaster complaint is legitimate, and a revenue base that ignores subscriptions is arguably out of date. But the draft, as reported, strengthens the penalty half of the regime and leaves the obligation half empty. Without a clear, narrow and reviewable duty, a larger fine mainly raises the price of the regulator's discretion.