The Struggle for Turkey’s Internet

Special Report (Freedom House) August 2014                                         Türkçe

Nate Schenkkan, Osman Coşkunoğlu, Aslı Tunç *

This report focuses on the Internet in Turkey as it hosts the September 2014 Internet Governance Forum (IGF) in Istanbul. Turkey’s hosting of the IGF is timely because of the country’s critical role as a “swing state” — or, perhaps more fitting, a “battleground state” —  on issues of Internet policy.

In the Internet governance discussion, “swing states” have been defined as countries that have the capacity for outsize influence on international processes due to their resources and mixed political orientation. Turkey’s mixed orientation is clear at the level of global Internet governance. In 2012, Turkey was one of only three OECD countries to vote in favor of a new set of International Telecommunications Regulations (ITRs) that Russia and China had backed and that argued for expanding the state’s role in Internet governance. More recently, however, in June 2014 Turkey was one of a core group of countries along with the United States and Sweden backing a resolution at the UN Human Rights Council to recognize that the same rights people have offline must be respected online.

* Nate Schenkkan is a Program Officer for Freedom House covering Turkey and Central Asia. He is a co-author of Freedom House’s February 2014 report Democracy in Crisis: Corruption, Media, and Power in Turkey . Osman Coşkunoğlu is a former professor of industrial engieering and member of Turkish Parliament from 2002-2011, during which time he received several awards for his work on technological issues in parliament. Aslı Tunç is professor of communications and head of the Media School at Bilgi University in Istanbul, Turkey. She is co-author of a recent book in Turkish, Blogdan Al Haberi, on the impact of political news blogs on the future of journalism.

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