Turkey in vanguard of throttling social media after attacks

Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan (third from left) prays for employees who were killed in the attack on the Istanbul airport. (Photo: AP)

After suicide bombers killed 45 people at Istanbul’s main airport last week, the Turkish government appeared to take a step that has become increasingly common around the world in moments of political uncertainty: restricting access to Facebook, Twitter and YouTube.

Turkey denies that it blocks the Internet, blaming outages last week and earlier this year on spikes in usage after major events. But technical experts at watchdog groups say the blackouts on social media are intentional, aimed in part at stopping the spread of militant images and propaganda.

Countries such as China and Iran have long kept tight control over online media, but human rights and Internet activists say that many more democratic governments are now using Internet cutoffs to stifle free speech under the guise of fighting terrorism.

Government-ordered Internet restrictions can include outright blocking or “throttling” that slows certain websites to the point where they are unusable.

“It’s becoming the go-to mechanism for governments trying to control the flow of information,” said Peter Micek, global policy and legal counsel for Access Now, a group that campaigns for digital rights and monitors shutdowns. “It is still the Wild West in terms of what’s acceptable behaviour and what violates human rights online.”

While there were about 15 Internet shutdowns around the world in 2015, there have been at least 21 instances so far this year, according to Access Now.

The trend helped prompt the United Nations Human Rights Council last week to renew what has become known as the “Internet resolution”, effectively defining Internet shutdowns as a violation of human rights. The resolution, which has been adopted by the more than 40 member states since its introduction in 2012, is not legally binding, but is meant to set standards for state behaviour.

Turkey in vanguard Turkey has emerged as one of the countries using Internet shutdowns most aggressively in response to political events, according to human rights advocates. Turkey has shut down access entirely to certain sites, or throttled it, on seven occasions over the past year, according to Turkey Blocks, a group that monitors censorship in Turkey.

In such cases, including after the Istanbul attack last week, the Turkish government has invoked a national security law to publicly ban the broadcast of certain material. In the case of social media, that appears to have been effected by a throttling or shutdown of sites.

Speaking to Reuters, a senior Turkish government official denied that Turkey engages in Internet throttling and said that the inability to access sites — including after last week’s attack — was due to heavier-than-average traffic.

“In the wake of major developments, including terror attacks, more users try to access social media platforms and the increased demand inevitably slows down the Internet,” said the official.

About three hours after the Istanbul airport attack, users across the country commented on social media that they were forced to use virtual private networks — which can access the Internet via another country — to access Facebook, Twitter and YouTube, while many other sites were unaffected.

Around the same time, the Turkish prime minister’s office imposed a formal media restriction and banned sharing images of the blast or the scene. As on previous occasions, that appears to have been carried out by restricting access to social media.