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According to the Free Web Turkey 2023 Internet Censorship Report, access to 219,059 URLs were blocked in Turkey in 2023. Of these, 14,680 were news articles, most of which were about corruption and irregularities. The people mentioned in these articles as being involved in crimes were mainly public officials and people close to President Erdoğan's party, the AKP.
The Free Web Turkey 2023 Internet Censorship Report, which shows how many domains, news articles, social media posts, social media accounts and other digital materials were blocked in Turkey in 2023, has been published.
According to the report, prepared by journalist Ali Safa Korkut, coordinator of the Free Web Turkey project, a total of 219,059 URLs were blocked last year, including 197,907 domain names, 14,680 news articles, 5,641 social media posts, 743 social media accounts and 38 reviews of business locations registered on Google.
In addition, access was blocked to 33 Google search results, 9 mobile applications, 5 Google Drive files, 2 email addresses and 1 Google document.
You can access the full report via this link.
The report, which follows a year of monitoring, not only includes all statistics related to blocked digital material, but also highlights significant blocking decisions, mistakenly blocked articles, government censorship of social media during the 6 February earthquakes, and articles blocked as a pretext for arresting journalists.
Most blocked news articles were about corruption and irregularities
Looking at the distribution of blocked news articles by topic, corruption and irregularities (5,881 articles) topped the list, followed by crimes against women and children (2,256 articles) and organised crime (1,733 articles).
In the 5,881 articles on corruption and irregularities that were blocked, the alleged perpetrators were identified as public officials (3,192 articles) and people close to President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan's party, the Justice and Development Party (AKP) (1,133 articles). Erdoğan and his family were implicated in crimes in 646 articles.
News articles alleging involvement of public officials and people close to the AKP in crimes were blocked
Looking at the subjects of the total 14,680 blocked news articles, the top five were public officials (5,150 articles), private citizens (2,580 articles), individuals and organisations close to the AKP (2,575 articles), companies (1,151 articles) and President Erdoğan and his family (854 articles).
The main topics of news articles about public officials were corruption and irregularities (3,192 articles) and crimes against women and children (693 articles). Corruption and irregularities were again the most common topic of news articles about individuals and organisations close to the AKP, with 1,133 articles. Of the 854 blocked articles about President Erdoğan and his family, 646 related to allegations of corruption and irregularities.
Access was blocked to articles alleging abuse and corruption by religious orders
A total of 221 articles concerning religious orders were blocked by 11 different decisions. These articles related to crimes against women and children (157 articles), corruption and irregularities (60 articles), and exploitation of religion (4 articles).
Including social media posts, a total of 301 URLs related to religious orders were blocked in 2023.
News articles blocked for "violation of personal rights
In terms of the reasons for blocking news articles, the most common justification was "violation of personal rights", which was used to block 14,332 articles.
Looking at the subjects of these articles, the top five were public officials (5,150 articles), private citizens (2,580 articles), individuals and organisations close to the AKP (2,575 articles), companies (1,147 articles) and President Erdoğan and his family (854 articles).
DW and VOA were also blocked
In 2023, domain names faced the highest number of access blocks, with a total of 197,907 URLs blocked.
This figure was reached through 173 different decisions, revealing that, as in 2022, internet newspapers not controlled by President Erdoğan were censored in 2023.
In fact, 30 domain names belonging to newspapers not controlled by Erdoğan and engaged in objective journalism were blocked by 29 different court orders last year, with some publishers' domain names being blocked multiple times.
Among those blocked were the websites of the Turkish editions of Deutsche Welle and Voice of America.
Three different domain names, two belonging to DW and one to VOA, were blocked at the request of the Supreme Council of Radio and Television (RTÜK) for allegedly broadcasting without a licence.
Social media posts about corruption and irregularities were blocked
The number of social media posts blocked in 2023 was 5,641.
This number was reached through 135 different court decisions. When analyzing the blocked posts by topic, corruption and irregularities ranked first with 2,948 posts, accounting for more than half of all social media posts blocked in 2023.
Following corruption and irregularities, social media posts about crimes against women and children were the next most commonly blocked. In 2023, a total of 1,607 posts on this topic were blocked by 35 different decisions.
Sidar Demiroglu detail
In November 2023, a judge in Turkey named Sidar Demiroglu was removed from office for allegedly issuing blocking orders in exchange for bribes.
According to the Free Web Turkey 2023 Internet Censorship Report, the Istanbul Anadolu 4th Criminal Peace Judgeship, where Demiroglu served as a judge, was the authority that blocked the most social media posts.
The judgeship issued orders to block access to 1,796 social media posts, reaching this number through 21 different rulings, with Demiroğlu signing 20 of these orders.
In 2023, a total of 743 social media accounts were blocked.