ANKARA: The Turkish Parliament has approved a law that could see reporters and social media users jailed for up to three years for spreading “fake news”. Lawmakers from the ruling AK Party and its nationalist ally MHP, which together have a majority, approved the bill which has been strongly criticized by human rights activists and bodies including Amnesty International.
According to local and international media reports, the new rules cement the government’s already-firm grip on the media eight months before a general election that President Recep Tayyip Erdogan enters trailing in the polls.
Responding to the move, Amnesty International called it a “today is yet another dark day for online freedom of expression and press freedom in Turkey.” Güney Yildiz, the Regional Researcher at Amnesty International, said that coming on the heels of the government’s increased control of the media over the last few years, these new measures enabled them to further censor and silence critical voices ahead of Turkey’s upcoming elections and beyond, under the guise of fighting disinformation.
“In fact, rather than ensuring information safety, the law’s vaguely defined provisions facilitate further the prosecution of those who allegedly publicly disseminate ‘false information and could see people facing jail terms of up to three years merely for a retweet,” he added.
Amnesty International said that the legislation opens yet new avenues for the authorities to extend their draconian crackdown on freedom of expression and increase the chilling effect that fear of criminal prosecution brings.
