Reporting Obligations, Public Transparency and Corporate Notification

Under Supplemental Article 4 of Law No. 5651, social media platforms face a dual-track reporting regime. This mechanism is designed to force platforms out of the shadows, compelling them to disclose their policies, practices, and legal compliance both to the general public and to the supervisory authority, the BTK.

I. Public Transparency Report

Both domestic and foreign-sourced social media platforms with more than one million daily accesses from Türkiye must prepare a transparency report detailing statistical and categorical data regarding user applications.⁴⁰ This document is not merely an internal memo; it must be prepared in Turkish and published biannually on the platform’s own website in a publicly accessible format, with all personal data redacted.⁴¹

II. The Corporate Report: A Mandate for Detail

Following the amendments introduced by Article 34 of Law No. 7418 on 13 October 2022, a second, more specific reporting tier was established. This corporate report, submitted exclusively to the BTK, demands a deep dive into the platform’s operations:

• Statistical and categorical data on the implementation of content removal and access blocking decisions;

• Policies regarding hashtags;

• The algorithmic logic behind content promotion and demotion (reach reduction);

• Advertising and transparency policies, including the ad library;

• Collaborative measures taken with the BTK to prevent crimes under Law No. 5651.

However, the obligations do not end there. Article 10(3) of the Procedures and Principles published by the BTK significantly widens the net. It mandates that platforms explicitly include:

• Details on technical infrastructure, personnel qualifications, and administrative capacity for processing legal orders;

• Precise process information, including implementation times, methods, and geographical scope of decisions;

• Granular data on user applications: volume, type, approval/rejection rates, grounds, and processing speeds;

• Full details on judicial and administrative orders: content, transmission methods, and legal basis;

• Self-auditing mechanisms and measures to ensure equal, impartial treatment of users;

• Algorithmic parameters for content recommendation systems and user options to limit data usage.

Table 4 illustrates the expansion of these requirements, contrasting the baseline statutory obligations with the extensive additions imposed by the secondary legislation.

Matters Included in the Law	Additions via Procedures and Principles
Statistical and categorical information regarding decisions on content removal and/or access blocking	Information regarding technical infrastructure, personnel qualifications, and administrative capacity for receiving and processing content removal and/or access blocking decisions and user applications
Information regarding applications within the scope of paragraph 3 (publicly available)	Detailed process information regarding the implementation duration, method of implementation, and geographical scope of decisions
Hashtags, content that is promoted/ whose reach is reduced, and algorithms	Categorical and statistical data such as the number and type of user applications, positive/negative evaluation results, grounds, and processing times
Advertising policies	Information regarding the content of decisions sent by judicial and administrative authorities, the method of transmission, relevant legislation provisions, and implementation times
Transparency policies	Statistics regarding self-auditing practices and measures taken
Information regarding the ad library	Information regarding measures taken to ensure equal and impartial treatment of users
	Information regarding necessary measures taken to allow updating preferences regarding content suggested to users and offering the option to limit the use of users’ personal data
	Matters regarding the creation of an ad library and its publication on the website
	Information regarding necessary measures taken within their own systems, mechanisms, and algorithms regarding the non-publication of content and hashtags related to crimes within the scope of the Law

Table 4: Comparison of the Law and the Procedures and Principles

The scope of this data facilitates more than just technical oversight; it enables the monitoring of fundamental governance principles. Beyond reporting, platforms are legally obliged to:

• Publish clear, accessible explanations of the algorithmic parameters used for content recommendations;

• Empower users to update recommendation preferences and limit personal data usage;

• Maintain a public ad library detailing ad content, advertisers, duration, targeting parameters, and reach statistics.

Whether these obligations have been met is evaluated individually for each platform in the second part of this study.

III. Continuous Public Information

It is deemed insufficient for social media platforms to report merely at six-month intervals. Platforms are mandated to publish specific critical information on a continuous basis. This includes contact details for the Turkish representative, the live ad library (containing ad content, type, advertiser, duration, target audience and parameters, and the number of persons or groups reached),⁴² content recommendation parameters, user data options, and transparency policies.

This requirement transcends mere data sharing. It is a fundamental component of the platform’s duty of transparency and accountability to the public. Platforms must act transparently, submit documents to the Authority promptly upon request, and crucially, treat all users equally and impartially.

Timing and Sanctions

The schedule is strict: reports covering 1 January – 30 June must be submitted in July, while those for 1 July – 31 December are due in January.⁴³ Non-compliance carries a substantial price: the BTK President is mandated to impose an administrative fine of ten million Turkish Liras for failure to report.⁴⁴

The reporting obligation under Supplemental Article 4 spans nine periods, from 2021 to the first half of 2025. Table 5 below assesses compliance across the board.

Social Media Platform	Reporting Obligation	2021–2025 Period
VKontakte	Partially Fulfilled	2023-II, 2024-II & 2025-I Reports Not Published
YouTube	Fulfilled	All Reports Published
Dailymotion	Fulfilled	All Reports Published
TikTok	Fulfilled	All Reports Published
Pinterest	Partially Fulfilled	2021-I Report Not Published
Facebook/Instagram	Fulfilled	All Reports Published
X/Twitter	Fulfilled	All Reports Published
LinkedIn	Not Fulfilled	Only 2022-II Report Published
Ekşi Sözlük	Fulfilled	All Reports Published

Table 5: Assessment of Reporting Obligation

The data in Table 5 reveals significant disparities. While giants like YouTube, TikTok, and Meta have fully complied with their obligations, LinkedIn exhibits a shocking level of non-compliance, having published a report for only a single period. This lays bare the platform’s total indifference towards transparency. Similarly, VKontakte has missed three reports, raising questions about whether the BTK has enforced any sanctions.

Broadly speaking, regular reporting is not just an administrative box-ticking exercise, it is the bedrock of public trust. Platforms that fail to report erode this foundation. Furthermore, the public remains in the dark as to whether the BTK has fined serial offenders like LinkedIn. The absence of any official public decision suggests that auditing and sanctioning processes are conducted behind closed doors, far from public scrutiny.

Of even greater concern is the quality of the reports that are published. Locating them is often a challenge, and the content is frequently generic. Most reports fail to provide the specific statistical breakdowns regarding Article 9 and 9/A required by law.⁴⁵ Consequently, the public has no way of knowing whether these platforms are truly compliant or merely engaging in a performance of transparency.

Theoretically, these obligations place a substantial burden of accountability on social media platforms, extending beyond simple content moderation to the murky waters of algorithmic transparency and data processing. In practice, however, these regulations are frequently met with mere lip service. The submission of reports to the public and the BTK has been reduced to a hollow exercise in formalistic compliance, symbolic reporting devoid of substance.

The mandates to “treat users equally and impartially” and to disclose algorithms should serve as mechanisms for democratic oversight into the platforms’ internal workings. Yet, almost no platform displays a credible level of transparency in these areas. Furthermore, the specific data actually submitted to BTK remains a mystery.

This institutional secrecy fosters a broader environment of obscurity. We face a digital landscape where ad libraries are either non-existent or data-poor, where user controls are stifled, and where algorithmic manipulation is systematically concealed. In this context, the reporting obligation remains a vast void in the protection of digital rights.

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40. Supp. Art. 4/3. ↩

41. Law No. 5651, Supp. Art. 4(4). Also see Procedures and Principles Regarding Social Media Platforms, Article 10(4). ↩

42. BTK, Procedures and Principles Regarding Social Media Platforms, Article 11. ↩

43. Law No. 5651, Provisional Article 5(1)(b). ↩

44. Law No. 5651, Supp. Art. 4(8). Also see Procedures and Principles Regarding Social Media Platforms, Article 27. ↩

45. Supp. Art. 4(3). ↩