“We have to start enforcing this law before, God forbid, [US President Donald] Trump leaves office in November. We have to get the social media bill out of the Turkish parliament before the summer vacation,” said a senior bureaucrat over the phone June 20. Nine days after Al-Monitor spoke to the source, that same bill — without much change or substantial deliberation in the parliament — became law in the early hours of the morning despite the protests of the opposition.

It is called the Social Media Law. Any platform that allows users to share or view documents, images or videos can be regulated under its jurisdiction. The law refers to these platforms as “social network providers.” Indeed, Turkey already had several rather strict rules in place to regulate social media. In 2018, the government bragged about its "cyber army" of 2,700 keeping an eye on the online activities of 45 million users. These numbers have since increased. 

The existing legislation was not sufficient because social media has become a growing vulnerability for President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s political future. In the last decade, the government created ingenious methods to turn almost all traditional media outlets into its own mouthpieces. Turkey is not only the country with the most jailed journalists, but one where newspapers and TV channels that act out of line are regularly fined and even shut down either for a period or permanently. 

Just when Erdogan gained complete control of the traditional media, the public's trust to these networks evaporated. In June, MetroPoll poling agency reported that 78% of the public do not believe in the official inflation rate. More surprising may be that when separated by party loyalty, Justice and Development (AKP) party voters’ distrust reached 67%. Simultaneously, social media became a haven for independent journalists.