Conclusion: The Illusion of Transparency and the Digital Obedience Regime

The investigations detailed in the Freedom of Expression Association’s report, Digital Obedience Regime: Social Media Platforms and the Illusion of Transparency in Türkiye, reveal a stark reality. The regulations targeting social media platforms in Türkiye go far beyond the stated rhetoric of “protecting user rights” or “ensuring transparency”. Instead, they have constructed a “digital obedience regime” designed to bring the digital public sphere under state control.

Established through amendments to Law No. 5651 in 2020 and 2022, this system has forcibly integrated social media platforms into Türkiye’s legal apparatus. However, this integration was not built upon the rule of law or fundamental rights; rather, it was forged under the shadow of severe administrative sanctions and the existential threat of bandwidth throttling.

I. Formal Compliance and the Chaos of Representation

All global platforms examined in this report, including X (Twitter), Meta (Facebook & Instagram), YouTube, TikTok, Pinterest, VKontakte, and Dailymotion, have fulfilled the obligation to appoint a representative in Türkiye. Through various title changes and capital increases, they have achieved technical alignment with the law.

Yet, this “full compliance” is largely a paper tiger. It remains woefully inadequate in establishing the principle of “effective and accountable interlocutorship”, purportedly the fundamental objective of the legislation.

The architecture of these corporate entities exposes a calculated strategy: the managers are entities based abroad, and the individuals authorised to act on their behalf also reside overseas. This suggests that the institution of representation functions not as a centre of legal liability, but as a “shield”, a mechanism designed solely to ward off administrative sanctions like bandwidth throttling and advertising bans.

Consequently, it is evident that platforms are pursuing a strategy of minimal viable compliance. They rely on shell representations to maintain their market presence in Türkiye, satisfying the letter of the law while effectively circumventing its spirit.

II. Reporting Indiscipline and Data Concealment

The “Transparency Reports”, proclaimed by the Law as its flagship tool for accountability, have devolved into dysfunctional datasets. Our investigations confirm that nearly every platform is in violation of the obligation to “present statistical and categorical information” explicitly imposed by Supplemental Article 4/4 of Law No. 5651.

By refusing to present disaggregated data regarding applications under Article 9 (violation of personal rights) and Article 9/A (violation of privacy), the vast majority of platforms create a fog of categorical uncertainty that renders public scrutiny impossible.

Our platform-by-platform analysis reveals that this policy of “data concealment” has become systematic:

• Meta (Facebook & Instagram): A strategy of data pooling. Applications under Article 9 and Article 9/A are never disaggregated; instead, they are dumped into a single, amorphous pool, effectively obscuring the specific nature of the violations.

• X (Twitter): A strategy of total omission. Despite publishing regular reports, specific statistics under Article 9 and Article 9/A have been entirely absent from every reporting period.

• TikTok: A strategy of glossed-over compliance. The platform ignores the distinction between Article 9 and Article 9/A, bypassing the legal obligation without presenting any meaningful categorical data.

• Pinterest: A strategy of silence. Despite possessing legal application channels, no data specific to Articles 9 or 9/A has been shared in any transparency report.

• VKontakte (VK): A strategy of minimalism. The platform offers no distinction between the relevant articles, contenting itself with presenting merely general application numbers.

• Dailymotion: A strategy of consistent exclusion. Like X, it has failed to include data under Article 9 and Article 9/A in any report to date.

• Ekşi Sözlük: A strategy of domestic non-compliance. Despite being a Turkish-sourced platform, even Ekşi Sözlük fails to numerically disaggregate Article 9 and Article 9/A data in its report texts.

• YouTube (Google): A strategy of obfuscation. Unique among the platforms, YouTube disaggregates the number of applications by article (9 vs 9/A) but aggregates the results (removal/rejection). This makes it impossible to correlate actions with specific violation types. Furthermore, its continued citation of legal articles annulled by the Constitutional Court undermines the legal reliability of its data.

• LinkedIn: A strategy of dereliction. The platform ignored the process entirely by failing to publish reports in eight of the nine periods. In the solitary report it did publish, it presented an incredible claim: that it had received zero requests under the relevant articles.

This landscape demonstrates that transparency reports are not designed to empower users or inform the public. Instead, they have become performative exercises, hollowed-out documents including “ineffective data dumps” submitted solely to tick a formal legal box and evade sanctions.

III. Interventions Based on Norms that have Lost Legal Validity

One of the report’s most damning findings is the continued enforcement of repealed statutory provisions, a practice fundamentally incompatible with the rule of law. Although the Constitutional Court’s annulment of Article 9 of Law No. 5651 entered into force on 10 October 2024, transparency reports from 2025 reveal a startling anomaly: certain platforms, most notably YouTube, explicitly declare that they continue to remove content based on this defunct article.

This demonstrates that administrative and commercial practices have become dangerously detached from constitutional judicial review. The survival “in practice” of a censorship mechanism that has lost its legal validity implies a de facto consensus between platforms and administrative authorities. This collaboration renders constitutional safeguards dysfunctional and constitutes a severe, ongoing threat to freedom of expression.

IV. Providing Information to Judicial Authorities: Opaque and Contradictory

Our examination of the obligation to provide information to judicial authorities reveals a profound policy divergence among social media platforms. While Türkiye-specific transparency reports are silent on this vital issue, the limited data available in global reports exposes a stark reality.

The analysis conducted in the light of the limited current data in global reports exposes the reality of, on one hand, Google (YouTube), which meets legal information requests from Türkiye at a rate of 0% (zero) and cooperates only in emergency situations posing a danger to life; and on the other hand, Meta (Facebook & Instagram) and TikTok, which choose to share user data by responding positively to more than 80% of requests. The marked increase observed in the data sharing rates of Meta and TikTok, particularly following the entry of the bandwidth throttling sanction into the legal ground, indicates that these platforms prioritise their commercial interests over user privacy and succumb to legal pressures.

The case of X (formerly Twitter) under Elon Musk offers a different, yet equally concerning, perspective. Breaking with past practice, X has largely abandoned global reporting since 2021, releasing only a limited dataset for the first half of 2024. Yet, the same platform publishes comprehensive, detailed transparency reports¹⁰⁸ to comply with the European Union’s Digital Services Act (DSA).

This double standard is proof positive that social media platforms possess the technical capacity to raise transparency standards when compelled. Their failure to do so for Türkiye is not a matter of ability, but of will, a deliberate choice to gloss over the process with “restricted and dysfunctional” reports.

V. Legal Instruments of Pressure and the Shrinking of Civic Space

The social protests and election processes of 2025 have once again highlighted how broadly and arbitrarily Article 8/A of Law No. 5651 (public order, national security, etc.) is weaponised to suppress opposition voices.

Data compiled from transparency reports paints a grim picture of the digital public sphere. With content removal and access blocking compliance rates reaching 92.65% for TikTok and hovering at similarly high levels for Meta (specifically Instagram), the Turkish internet is devolving into an increasingly sterile, controllable structure dominated by a single voice.

Most alarming is the readiness of platforms to sacrifice the accounts of journalists, rights defenders, and civil society organisations. To maintain their commercial foothold in the face of “administrative fines” and “bandwidth throttling”, these entities appear willing to abandon their role as neutral conduits, signalling a dark future for digital civic space and pluralism in Türkiye.

VI. A Systemic Failure: ‘Statistical Counts Devoid of Accountability’

Our critique of the transparency practices of social media platforms extends beyond their specific implementation in Türkiye; it targets a broader, global strategy of “avoiding accountability”. Current academic reviews regarding the European Union’s Digital Services Act (DSA) condemn platform reports as little more than “statistical counts devoid of accountability”.¹⁰⁹

These criticisms provide firm theoretical grounds for analysing the “Illusion of Transparency” in Türkiye. Academic concepts such as “disconnected data points” and the argument that transparency often creates an “illusion of visibility” rather than ensuring accountability¹¹⁰ are acutely relevant here. In the Turkish context, establishing a causal link between decisions and their grounds, or correlating different datasets, is impossible.

The evidence for this is substantial. Meta, for instance, conflates Article 9 and Article 9/A, while TikTok fails to disaggregate content removal grounds locally. Similarly, LinkedIn declares “zero” requests in its local report, despite its global database revealing a 100 per cent processing rate for Turkish requests. Such discrepancies reduce the analytical value and reliability of the data to nil. Consequently, researchers cannot track which mechanisms are used to remove specific content, stripping the reports of their function as an audit tool.

Laundering Censorship

Furthermore, our examination indicates a systematic tendency to process legal requests under the guise of “Community Guidelines Violations”. This tactic allows platforms to sidestep legal formalities and artificially suppress censorship statistics. Concrete examples include the surge in TikTok’s “guideline-based” removals and LinkedIn’s “silent” processing of official requests.

Effectively, when a platform deletes content at the state’s behest but labels it a rules violation, the action is recorded not as “government censorship” but as “routine hygiene”. Thus, the true scale of state intervention remains veiled.

The Comparison Trap

Finally, the use of idiosyncratic reporting formats creates a problem of arbitrary categorisation, rendering cross-platform comparison impossible. While such arbitrariness is criticised even within the strict template regime of the DSA, the situation in Türkiye is far worse. Lacking a standardised template, YouTube, X, and Meta present data in non-standard formats that are fundamentally incompatible.

By adopting the worst practices of the global transparency debate, social media platforms in Türkiye have transformed these reports from mechanisms “exposing what is censored” into bureaucratic showcases, designed merely to market “how much action has been taken”.

VII. Algorithmic Uncertainty and Unaudited ‘Flow’ Management

The “Digital Obedience Regime” is not constructed solely from “visible” access blocking practices implemented via judicial and administrative decisions. Rather, it is bolstered by a lack of oversight regarding the algorithmic preferences that dictate what the public sees. The algorithmic curation processes of digital platforms, rightly characterised as “black boxes,” have created a sphere of absolute power. Far removed from transparency, these mechanisms decide unilaterally which content is highlighted and which is suppressed.

This structural opacity highlights a critical legal void, particularly regarding search engines like Google, the primary gatekeepers of news and information flow. While Law No. 5651 subjects social media platforms to specific transparency obligations, search engines and news feed services such as Google News or Google Discover effectively evade this oversight mechanism. This legal blind spot allows algorithmic flow management to operate in a domain that is arbitrary and vulnerable to commercial and political pressure.

Shadow Banning in Practice

Data from independent media organisations (including HalkTV, Gazete Duvar, and Diken) reveals that traffic is frequently severed by sudden algorithmic interventions, often without any judicial decision.¹¹¹ This demonstrates that a practice of “shadow banning” is in full effect: content is not officially prohibited, yet it is stifled before it can reach an audience.

By failing to disclose the criteria for promoting or demoting content, platforms create unfair competition. This inflicts irreparable damage on freedom of expression and the press by eroding the visibility and economic sustainability of independent media.

The Weaponisation of ‘Delisting’

Even more alarming is the transformation of Google’s “delisting” notifications into a concrete instrument of censorship. Data from the Freedom of Expression Association documents that 33 delisting notifications were issued regarding EngelliWeb content between August 2024 and November 2025.¹¹²

These notifications are also frequently targeted at news organisations such as Diken, Bianet, and Gazete Duvar (prior to its closure). Crucially, Google operates here with total opacity:

• It presents no court order;

• It does not specify which “local law” has been violated;

• It conducts the process in secrecy, claiming it “cannot share details due to legal reasons”.

• It does not provide an “appeal mechanism”.

This practice, which is closed to appeal, paves the way for arbitrary algorithmic shadow censorship. It reinforces the fear that concepts such as the “right to be forgotten” are being manipulated as tools to erase public memory.

International Scrutiny

These arbitrary practices face intense legal scrutiny on the international stage. On 13 November 2025, the European Commission launched a formal investigation into Google for potential violations of the Digital Markets Act (DMA). The Commission cited indications that Google unfairly demoted media publishers’ content under its “site reputation abuse policy”.¹¹³

The EU is actively investigating whether this policy undermines the obligation to provide access to publishers under fair, reasonable, and non-discriminatory (FRAND) conditions. That such algorithmic interventions, viewed by the EU as a “potential threat to media pluralism and democracy” can occur in Türkiye without any legal oversight lays bare the naked arbitrariness of the digital obedience regime.

VIII. The Regulatory Body’s ‘Trade Secret’ Shield and the Impossibility of Public Oversight

When evaluating the transparency performance of Social Media Platforms, the attitude of the regulatory body, the Information and Communication Technologies Authority (BTK) reveals just how insular the “digital obedience regime” truly is.

A freedom of information request filed via CIMER on 20 November 2025, and the subsequent response from the BTK on 11 December 2025, provide documentary evidence of the system’s foundation. It is built not on transparency, but on a “secret consensus” between the state and the platforms.

The Invisible Compliance

In the application filed, information was requested regarding whether platforms (X, Meta, TikTok, LinkedIn, etc.) submitted their corporate reports during the nine reporting periods between 2021 and 2025, as well as the contents of these reports. In its response, the BTK confirmed that all of the social media platforms in question had notified the Institution of their reports in all specified periods; stating that, for this reason, no administrative sanctions were applied against them.

This official declaration paints a picture diametrically opposed to the “public transparency fiasco” identified in this report. LinkedIn serves as a particularly instructive example. While the platform published virtually no reports on its public transparency page between 2021 and 2025, the BTK confirms it submitted “complete” reports to the state. This proves that platforms follow a dual strategy that is “obedient” to the state yet “closed” to the public.

The ‘Trade Secret’ and ‘Personal Data’ Shield

Of even greater concern is the BTK’s refusal to share this data, ironically collected under the heading of “transparency” with the public. Citing “trade secrets” and “personal data” (Law No. 4982, Arts. 21 and 23), the Institution has blocked access to these documents entirely.

This defence is technically incoherent. By their very nature, reports submitted by social media providers contain aggregate statistical data, specifically regarding application volumes, the types of actions taken, and the qualifications of moderation personnel, rather than individual case files. Consequently, the claim that these reports contain “personal data” is incompatible with technical reality.

Unlawful Secrecy

Moreover, even if the reports contained isolated instances of personal data or trade secrets, the BTK’s policy of total concealment is unlawful. Article 9 of the Law on the Right to Information (No. 4982) regulates the obligation to provide documents by separating confidential information; it commands that disclosable information must be presented to the applicant after confidential parts are redacted.

By treating the reports as classified secrets in their entirety, rather than operating such a redaction mechanism, the BTK has adopted an arbitrary approach that disregards the very principle of transparency. This renders any independent audit by civil society or researchers impossible, transforming “transparency reports” into “closed-circuit notifications” visible only to the state.

Conclusion

The lack of content in public reports, combined with the state’s zealous guarding of private reports, leads to an inescapable conclusion: Internet governance in Türkiye has transformed into a process of backroom bargaining and data exchange between platforms and the state.

Ultimately, the current legal regime and its implementation have converted social media platforms into “compliant apparatuses” of the state’s censorship and surveillance mechanism. Rather than protecting users’ freedom of expression, platforms have adopted dysfunctional reporting techniques and shown zero resistance regarding user data protection. Their continued enforcement of norms that have lost legal validity, despite annulment decisions by the Constitutional Court, demonstrates that the structural rot in Türkiye’s Internet freedom record continues to deepen.

In the final analysis, the stark contrast between the platforms’ compliance with high transparency standards in the European Union and their deliberate opacity in Türkiye exposes a hypocritical corporate ethos. By prioritising market access over fundamental rights, these global entities have voluntarily reduced themselves to local instruments of control. Unless this “collusive silence” is broken, the ideal of a free and open Internet in Türkiye will remain nothing more than a nostalgic memory, buried under a mountain of redacted reports and arbitrary algorithms.

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108. For example, for the 01.04-30.10.2025 report published by X, see https://transparency.x.com/dsa-transparency-report-2025-october.html. For all reports, see https://digital-strategy.ec.europa.eu/en/policies/dsa-brings-transparency ↩

109. Or “counting without accountability” See Analysis of the DSA’s Transparency Reports: Counting without accountability?, Humboldt Institute for Internet and Society (HIIG), 25.09.2025, https://www.hiig.de/en/analysis-of-the-dsas-transparency-reports/ ↩

110. Regarding the disconnection between the “transparency ideal” and “meaningful accountability” and the risk of transparency creating a state of “not knowing”, see Ananny, M., & Crawford, K. (2018), “Seeing without knowing: Limitations of the transparency ideal and its application to algorithmic accountability”, New Media & Society, 20(3), 973–989. For categorical uncertainty of data, the problem of cross-platform comparison, and lack of granular data, see Suzor, N., West, S. M., Quodling, A., & York, J. (2019), “What Do We Mean When We Talk About Transparency? Toward Meaningful Transparency in Commercial Content Moderation,” International Journal of Communication, 13, 1526–1543. For current legal analyses on how platforms turn data into a “black box” in the face of legal regulations, see Leerssen, P. (2020), “The Soap Box as a Black Box: Regulating Transparency in Social Media Recommender Systems,” European Law Journal, 26(3-4), 266-288. regarding the insufficiency of merely numerical data in transparency reports and the standard of meaningful data supported by “reasons for decisions” (“Santa Clara Principles”), also see Santa Clara Principles on Transparency and Accountability in Content Moderation 2.0 (2021), https://santaclaraprinciples.org/. ↩

111. See BBC Turkish, “Gazete Duvar neden kapandı, Google algoritma eleştirilerine ne diyor?” (“Why did Gazete Duvar close, what does Google say to algorithm criticisms?”), 14.03.2025, https://www.bbc.com/turkce/articles/c3rn1zyp5q8o; Gazete Duvar, “Halk TV: Google’a karşı yasal süreç başlatıyoruz” (“Halk TV: We are initiating legal process against Google”), 06.03.2025, https://www.gazeteduvar.com.tr/halk-tv-googlea-karsi-yasalsurec-baslatiyoruz-haber-1762160; Agos, Haber sitelerinden Google’a mektup: Algoritma değişikliği okur kaybına neden oluyor” (“Letter from news sites to Google: Algorithm change causes reader loss”), 13.03.2025, https://www.agos.com.tr/tr/yazi/haber-sitelerinden-google-a-mektup-algoritma-degisikligi-okur-kaybina-neden-oluyor-32115; HalkTV, Google sansürden; biz gazetecilik ısrarımızdan vazgeçmiyoruz! Halk TV ailesine bir çağrımız var (“Google does not give up censorship; nor do we give up our insistence on journalism! We have a call to the Halk TV family”), 01.12.2025, https://halktv.com.tr/gundem/google-sansurden-biz-gazetecilik-israrimizdan-vazgecmiyoruz-halk-tv-ailesine-bir-990167h; Halk TV’ye Google terörü... Kopya haberler ödüllendiriliyor gazetecilik cezalandırılıyor (“Google terror on Halk TV... Copy[-paste] news rewarded, journalism punished”) 09.12.2025, https://halktv.com.tr/gundem/halk-tvye-google-teroru-kopya-haberler-odullendiriliyor-gazetecilik-992028h; Google’ın emeğimize nasıl çöktüğünü delilleriyle ifşa ediyoruz! Varan 1 (“We expose with evidence how Google usurped our labour! Part 1”) 10.12.2025, https://halktv.com.tr/gundem/googlein-emegimize-nasil-coktugunu-delilleriyle-ifsa-ediyoruz-varan-1-992184h. ↩

112. Google Search Console notifications transmitted to the Freedom of Expression Association. The notifications state: “Due to a request under Turkish local law, Google can no longer show one or more pages from your site in Google Search results... Due to legal reasons, we are unable to share with you the details of the legal request received by Google.” It is known that these notifications are frequently sent to news sites such as Diken, Bianet, and Gazete Duvar. ↩

113. European Commission, “Commission opens investigation into potential Digital Markets Act breach by Google in demoting media publishers’ content in search results,” Press Release (IP/25/2675), Brussels, 13.11.2025, https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/ip_25_2675. Also see Diken, “Google’a soruşturma: ‘Haber içeriklerini alt sıralara indiriyor’” (“Investigation into Google: ‘It demotes news content to lower ranks’”), 13.11.2025, https://www.diken.com.tr/googlea-sorusturma-haber-iceriklerini-alt-siralara-indiriyor/; The Guardian, “EU investigates Google over ‘demotion’ of commercial content from news media,” 13.11.2025, https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2025/nov/13/eu-investigates-google-search-over-demoting-commercial-content-from-news-media. ↩