Turkey Mulls Strict Net Bill
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A media bill to go before the Turkish parliament Tuesday could cripple the Internet industry, harm the nation’s struggling economy and hobble free speech on the Web, observers say. The bill would expand already stringent regulations on all forms of media and would require websites to submit two hard copies of pages to be posted on the Internet to a government agency for prior approval. It also would require those who wish to open a website to obtain permission from local authorities, and to inform them every time the site is changed. Those who don’t comply or are found in violation could face fines ranging from about $95,000 to $195,000, enough to financially devastate most Web content and service providers in a country where per capita income is less than $2,200. The legislation comes at a time when European Union-hopeful Turkey is struggling to meet Brussels’ political criteria for membership, including overhauling its often dismal human rights record and expanding civil liberties. Dozens of journalists, politicians and intellectuals have been jailed under already draconian laws curbing free speech, and some fear vagaries in the proposed legislation could be used as tools for political prosecution. The burdens proposed in the bill would cause an exodus of Turkish websites abroad and deal a major blow to content provision and Internet expansion, said Savas Unsal, CEO of Superonline, Turkey’s biggest ISP with 950,000 dial-up and 2,500 corporate subscribers. Unsal said a lack of Turkish language content would further widen the nation’s digital divide in favor of the rich, who are educated enough to take advantage of the Internet in English. “We don’t want to provide access to just the elite,” Unsal said. “We want the government to let us do our jobs and open the gates to technology and the future.” The bill focuses mostly on print and broadcast media, Unsal said, and the Internet provision was tacked on as a result of e-mails and Internet news critical of the leaders of the nation’s three-party coalition government. “It was a quick and dirty job done by people who don’t understand the Internet or what they’re asking,” he said. Unsal also said the bill is incompatible with Turkey’s European Union membership bid, which requires more press freedom than exists under current law. European Union representatives have said the bill would harm democracy, and that it runs counter to the government’s publicly stated goal of loosening the country’s constitutional restrictions on speech and expression. The bill was killed last year by President Ahmet Necdet Sezer, who blasted it in his veto statement, saying parts of the proposed law were not “compatible with democratic traditions, basic rights and freedoms or constitutional principles.” If parliament members pass the bill again without change, though, Sezer’s hands will be tied. He’ll have to accept the law, and his only recourse will be to refer it to Turkey’s constitutional court. The court’s decision could take from a few months to a few years, hampering Internet growth in a country where Unsal says it already has been slowed by economic crisis. |