Announced How Many Websites Have Been Blocked in Turkey Last Year!

Freedom of Expression Association announced how many websites were blocked in Turkey in 2020. In addition, the investigations and blockings of social media accounts were also included in the report.

Freedom of Expression Association (IFÖD), which has been operating since 2017, has published its 2020 DisabledWeb report on Internet blocking in Turkey. The report, published under the title of "Fahrenheit 5651 - The Destructive Effect of Censorship", showed the number of websites blocked in Turkey throughout 2020, how much blocking was done by which institution, and the number of transactions made to social media accounts.

The study consists of scanning 207 million domain names every month, weekly scanning of 11 million current news including 90 different news sites, monthly scanning of news in approximately 33 million archive categories, real-time monitoring of whether 175 different domain names are blocked, using YouTube and Twitter API. Detection of blocked videos, accounts and content from Turkey was carried out by detecting and analyzing the access blocking decisions in the database using the Lumen API and the developed tools, and by analyzing the access blocking decisions sent from some news sites.

58,809 websites were blocked in Turkey in 2020:

According to the number announced by IFÖD, 58,809 websites were blocked in Turkey last year. While this number was announced as 61 thousand 380 in the previous year, 2018 was the peak year in terms of obstructions. In 2018 alone, 94 thousand 585 websites were blocked.

Most of the blocking was done by the BTK, but different institutions also signed the decision to block:

The Information Technologies and Communications Authority (BTK) bears its signature in 52,185 of the 58,809 blocking decisions made throughout 2020. The party that follows the decision to block the BTK is the judiciary with 3 thousand 25 blocking decisions. It is possible to see institutions such as Ministry of Health, Spor Toto, National Lottery, Jockey Club of Turkey and Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry on the list.

75 thousand social media accounts were questioned, legal action was taken against 32 thousand accounts:

In 2020, 75 thousand 292 social media accounts in Turkey were under scrutiny, and legal action was taken against 32 thousand 390 of them. Within the scope of legal proceedings, 2 thousand 397 people were taken into custody, 77 of them were arrested.