While social media continues to be an environment where authoritarian regime opponents can have their voices heard, how ‘free’ they can be has become a new debate. In particular, Turkey’s case for these discussions can be studied clearly on a concrete ‘event’ as emerges.
Recently, BOLD Media YouTube channel, which is a brand of IJA (International Journalists Association), had suspended as a result of the request of TRT (Turkish Radio and Television Corporation), which becomes a tool of Türkish government for international cencorship.
This attempt, whose topic is the demand of cencorship of Turkish government out of the borders and the judicial system of the country, resulted in re-broadcasting of BOLD Medya.
This international censorship attemp took place just after decision of having representatives the social media providers in Turkey as a result of oppression and penalty of Ankara.
As IJA, we have prepared a report examining this censorship attempt and we are sharing this report with you.
In this report; we want to draw attention to censorship and closure attempts of Erdogan regime by using TRT, used as an international tool, as a result of strategy of benefiting from media for propaganda.
As IJA, we have prepared a report examining this censorship attempt and we are sharing this report with you.
What has happened?
Cited from the report: “Bold Media, which produces content from Germany, unexpectedly faced censorship attempts in December 2020. As it has done to many other YouTube channels, Turkey’s state television TRT had dozens of videos of Bold Medya deleted by sending a “copyright warning” about these videos via the Content ID system, which YouTube offers to its business partners.”
The general secretary of International Journalists Association Mustafa Kılıç drew attention to the extent of censorship with his statements as “For the first time, Erdogan has closed a YouTube channel broadcasting from Europe. It is already known that different activities of Erdogan’s ‘long arms` are in Europe, especially in Germany. However, now we have seen that Erdogan can also shut down a YouTube news channel broadcasting from Germany. This is no different than closing Deutsche Welle’s Turkish-broadcasting YouTube channel. Our Association’s member journalists have been no freedom of expression in Turkey. Now it is very alarming to see our freedom of expression destroyed in Germany too through Erdogan’s ‘long arms`.”
You can find how the censorship system is carried out in our report.