The Turkish parliament adopted a law on Thursday providing up to three years in prison for the disclosure “of false or misleading information”. In addition to newspapers, radios, televisions, it also targets social networks and websites.
Le Monde
Tour de Vis on freedom of information in Turkey a few months before the general elections of June 2023. The Turkish Parliament has indeed adopted, Thursday, October 13, a law on disinformation, providing up to three years of Prison for the disclosure of “false or misleading information”.
In addition to newspapers, radios, televisions, the law aims for social networks and the websites to which will be asked to denounce and deliver the personal information of their users accused of propagation of false news.
Debaten since the beginning of October, the 40 articles of the text, officially baptized “Law on the press”, have been the subject of numerous amendments deposited, in vain, by the opposition which denounces for its part a “law of censorship “. With a majority of 334 seats out of 581 for the AK, the presidential party, and its allies, the text was unlikely to be arrested.
a “law of censorship” denounced by the opposition
Article 29, in particular, provides prison terms of one to three years for “propagation of false or deceptive information contrary to the domestic and external security of the country and likely to infringe public health, To disturb public order, to spread fear or panic within the population “.
The law also stipulates that the presidency will be responsible for preparing a “” misinformation bulletin “every Monday (…) in order to inform the public about disinformation and false news”.
In December 2021 the Head of State estimated that social networks, first perceived as a symbol of freedom, had “become one of the main threats to democracy”.
In the last hours of debates on Wednesday, and in a mood movement, a deputy for the opposition CHP (Social Democrat) party, Burak Erbay, addressing Turkish youth who “will vote for the first time in June ” – and which undergoes the full force of the serious economic crisis – brandished its smartphone and crushed it with a hammer.
“You only have one freedom, it’s this phone in your pocket. There you have Instagram, YouTube, Facebook. You exchange. Today (…) If the law is adopted by this Parliament , you can break them like that, my young brothers. Because you can’t use them anymore, “he said. Meral Danis Bektas, elected HDP (opposition, pro-kurdish) also considered that “this law is a declaration of war in the truth”.
The bill has aroused many concerns in journalistic circles and human rights organizations that had mobilized at the beginning of the month, masked in black before Parliament.
He had been deposited in May by the deputies AKP, Party of Justice and Development of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who will seek a new mandate in June 2023. A dozen associations and unions of journalists, including Reporters without Borders (RSF) had therefore denounced it as an attempted censorship on the part of the government.
Before the law passes, the Council of Europe had also denounced a “hindrance” to the freedom of expression guaranteed by the European Convention on Human Rights. According to the RSF classification, Turkey appears in 2022 at 149