Analyst on impact of Turkish social media law bill

Turkish parliament passed a contentious bill Thursday that amends press and social media laws with the stated aim of combatting fake news and disinformation. The 40-article legislation was approved with the votes of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan's governing party and its nationalist allies, which together hold a majority in parliament.

The most controversial provision, Article 29, mandates up to three years in prison for spreading information. The law also updates several clauses of social media regulations that passed in 2020, which placed requirements on companies like Facebook and Twitter to remove content or face advertisement bans and bandwidth reductions.

That law required social media companies to appoint a representative in Turkiye to deal with complaints. The new amendment now requires that the representative be a Turkish national who resides in the country.