On 23 April 2026, Turkey's Grand National Assembly passed an omnibus bill that bars children under 15 from social media and hands the telecoms regulator BTK a graduated set of enforcement tools — advertising bans, court-ordered bandwidth throttling, and fines up to 30 million lira. The headline is child protection. The lasting effect is something else: a permanent statutory machine for slowing platforms down and tying every Turkish account to a government ID.
What the law actually does
The text, as summarised by Turkey's state news agency Anadolu Agency, is specific. Social network providers "cannot serve children under 15" and must deploy age-verification measures; users 15 and older get differentiated, age-appropriate services with mandatory parental controls over settings, purchases, and screen time. Identity is checked through Turkey's e-Devlet government portal, which — per Al Jazeera — issues a unique key intended to confirm a user without handing the platform raw personal data.
Enforcement escalates. For platforms with more than 10 million daily Turkish users, missing a compliance deadline by 30 days triggers a ban on new advertising from Turkish taxpayers; after three months of non-compliance, BTK can order the platform's bandwidth "narrowed by 50 percent." Gaming platforms above 100,000 daily users must appoint a local representative or face tiered fines of 1 to 10 million lira, then 10 to 30 million, and ultimately a 30% throttle. The throttling and advertising provisions take effect six months after publication; large platforms must also honour urgent content-removal orders within one hour.
The strongest case for acting
The case for doing something is real and should not be waved away. The bill moved a week after a 14-year-old killed nine students and a teacher in a school shooting in Kahramanmaraş, and investigators examined the attacker's online activity. Parents across democracies share a genuine fear that engagement-optimised feeds expose children to self-harm content, extortion, and compulsive use faster than families can respond. Turkey is not an outlier: Australia's Online Safety Amendment (Social Media Minimum Age) Act 2024 took an under-16 ban live in December 2025, and the EU is actively debating age thresholds. A government that does nothing while harms accumulate is making a choice too.
But the evidence is thin and the architecture is the point
The problem is that age bans rest on shakier science than their certainty implies. As the Electronic Frontier Foundation argues in "The Science Is Not Settled," lawmakers worldwide are "rushing to regulate the internet based on shockingly shaky science" — the research linking social media to youth harm is correlational and contested, not the settled causal record a blanket prohibition would require. A ban is a maximalist remedy resting on a maybe.
And a maximalist remedy poorly targeted at minors tends to land on everyone. Mandatory e-Devlet verification does not check only children; it de-anonymises the entire adult user base of every covered platform. In a country that ranks among the world's most aggressive content removers, abolishing anonymous speech is not a side effect — it is a capability. The most likely outcome, as the analysis site Information Labs notes, is that determined minors migrate to less-regulated spaces via VPNs "with minimal technical knowledge," while the durable change is an identity-linked, throttle-ready chokepoint over lawful adult speech.
Throttling was always the live wire
What makes this law consequential is that the throttle is not new — it is being normalised. Turkey already wields bandwidth reduction as a censorship tool. In February 2023, after a catastrophic earthquake, authorities throttled Twitter for non-compliance with takedown orders: OONI's measurements recorded TLS handshakes ballooning from roughly 100 milliseconds to over three seconds, and DNS tampering on Vodafone returning 127.0.0.1 — a slowdown reversed only after officials met the platform. Similar restrictions accompanied the March 2025 detention of Istanbul's opposition mayor. Those were ad-hoc actions under the Internet Law's existing throttling authority, which permits reductions of up to 90%.
The Digital Platforms Law converts that improvised playbook into routine administrative procedure. Instead of invoking emergency provisions during a crisis, BTK now has a standing, child-safety-branded schedule — ad ban, 50% throttle, fines — it can run against any covered platform that resists an order. The throttle ceilings written into the new statute (50% for social networks, 30% for gaming) sit beneath the older 90% emergency power, but that is the trade: a lower cap in exchange for permanence and routine use. The exceptional becomes the everyday.
A proportionate path existed
None of this means Turkey should ignore child safety. Proportionate tools exist: default privacy-protective settings for minors, real penalties for platforms that ignore credible self-harm and grooming reports, design audits, and digital-literacy investment — measures that target the documented harm without de-anonymising adults or building throttling infrastructure. The opposition's framing, that children should be "protected with rights, not bans," points the right way.
The test of a child-safety law is whether it would still make sense if it could only be used to protect children. Turkey's would not. Strip away the under-15 headline and what remains is identity verification for all and a permanent throttling lever — a powerful instrument waiting for a purpose, and a country with a long record of finding one.