Jacob Resneck

Special for USA TODAY

Law limiting some Internet usage passes Parliament

Critics have warned bill is anti-democratic

Turkey has troubled relationship with social media

ISTANBUL — Turkey's Parliament voted Wednesday to empower authorities to censor the Internet at will, a move intended to silence dissent in a way many warn would turn the clock back on the country's democracy.

"One man can order a website to be closed, it's really anti-democratic," said lawyer Serhat Koc, an activist with Turkey's Pirate Party, which has been campaigning against the bill.

Turkey's Parliament approved on a show of hands the legislation that would allow its telecommunications authority to block websites without a prior court decision.

The bill would require Internet service providers to keep two years of every user's online history in what critics say would amount to a surveillance network on every Web user in the country.

Last month, police violently dispersed hundreds of demonstrators who rallied in Istanbul, Ankara and the coastal city of Izmir. Protesters flew banners and chanted slogans that brought a crackdown by riot police.

International press groups say the street protests demonstrate how much is at stake for a free society.

"I don't think people are standing up to water hoses and tear gas to look at cute cat videos," said Geoffrey King, Internet advocacy coordinator for the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists. "The Internet has the potential to be the greatest enabler of human expression, it also has the potential to be the greatest tool of social control."

The move has brought concern that Turkey — considered a key NATO ally for the U.S. and Europe — is becoming more authoritarian.

Widespread protests last spring that started over saving Istanbul's Gezi Park left at least six dead and injured more than a thousand, shaking the foundations of the Islamist-rooted AK Party that has ruled for 11 years.

So far Washington has refrained from criticizing its ally directly but has registered concern about Internet freedom.

"As the Turkish government evaluates its approach to Internet freedom, we hope the highest standards of openness and free expression will be protected," said State Department spokeswoman Katherine Pfaff in comments published on CPJ's website.

The bill would require service providers to take down objectionable content within four hours and any page found in violation by the country's telecom authority or face fines up to 100,000 lira ($44,500). It would also close loopholes and technical workarounds that are popular in a country that has already blocked an estimated 40,000 sites since 2007.

"This is not just about blocking access to certain types of content. They are trying to build up a new infrastructure to surveil people and collect data about all Internet users from Turkey," said Yamak Akdeniz, law professor at Istanbul's Bilgi University. "This obviously has serious implications, unprecedented I would say."

Turkey's current laws are designed to protect minors from harmful content. Many of the sites blocked are pornographic but some alternative media outlets and video sharing sites have also been banned.

The bill was unveiled in December, a day after family members of top politicians were implicated in a wide-ranging corruption probe targeting the prime minister's family and inner political circle.

Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan has so far been able to contain the probe by sacking hundreds of prosecutors and judges and reassigning thousands of police, saying his government is the victim of an international plot to undermine Turkey's world standing.

But in recent weeks videotapes and audio recordings from wiretaps have surfaced online that implicate Erdogan and his associates in shady dealings with business groups.

King, of the Committee to Protect Journalists, said the Internet bill would give the government broad censorship powers.

"Clearly if these amendments were to pass they would be very useful in clamping down on embarrassing information coming out," he said

Business groups have also weighed in. The Turkish Industry and Business Association penned a letter this week to the Family and Social Policies Ministry that proposed the bill. It warned that the restrictions would undermine investment and undermine the separation of powers by allowing the executive to censor content at will.

Turkey is a very wired country. It has one of the highest Internet usage rates in Europe with about 33 million registered Facebook accounts in a country of about 76 million people.

With government pressure on traditional media outlets like newspapers and television stations well-documented, many people go online to share and receive news.

"The only reliable information to obtain for the Turkish people and people living in Turkey is through social media and alternative news sites," Akdeniz said. "Facebook groups and Twitter have become crucially important for many people including myself."

That's led top politicians like Erdogan to condemn sites like Twitter as a tool used for extremists. During the height of the Gezi Park protests last June the prime minister declared, "To me, social media is the worst menace to society."

But rather than crack down on social media Erdogan's AK Party initially chose to fight fire with fire. This summer the party reportedly enlisted around 6,000 online volunteers to boost its presence online.

But that has apparently not been enough, said Akdeniz, and the government may resort to cruder methods to control the online sphere.

"There are other countries like Iran, Syria and China that try to deploy similar controls and unfortunately Turkey is moving toward that direction," he said.