All social media accounts in Turkey will now be linked to a government ID number. The global platforms agreed to the system, and it will be implemented after activation with the law by entering parliament, Justice Minister Akın Gürlek said on April 3. Unverified accounts are closed.
“Social media will now be viewed with actual information and personal identity. Let’s motivate the social media companies, we have reached an agreement with them,” Gürlek said. He didn’t specify the companies that signed up.
The plan involves an 11-digit code called TC Kimlik that is assigned to all Turkish citizens at birth and recorded in government databases along with other details such as family information, birth dates, names and biometric information. Ahta Gürlek described anonymous accounts as “disinformation engines and harassers. In the event that someone insults others or engages in a smear campaign on the Internet, the consequences must be felt,” he said.
The official explanation is notwithstanding Turkish history. IP addresses and Internet access logs have already enabled authorities to track back to anonymous users, cybersecurity experts have noted. The government does not want your national ID with each post. It requires you to be aware of it.
Since 2007, Turkey has blocked more than 1.26 million websites. During 2024, about 17,000 X accounts, 75,000 posts and tens of thousands of items were restricted across its platforms of YouTube, Facebook, and Instagram.
Brief street interviews, conducted by citizens with independent media, have been detained after they are shared online. Street interviews by citizens with independent media have been detained after their clips are circulated online. The Penal Code includes a provision that sends up to three years in jail for the dissemination of information that is deemed misleading; prison time is heavier for anonymous posts, up to five years. Turkish citizens had the ability to express their political opinions anonymously, in one of the few remaining places.
The regulation also only affects Turkey. There is no verification of foreign-operated accounts, which means that disinformation networks with offshore resources continue to operate anonymously, whereas those run by regular Turkish users are not.
Korea, a country with a population of nearly 40 million, implemented a close-to-identical system in 2007. In 2012, the Constitutional Court declared it unconstitutional due to the absence of any significant decrease in harmful content, and the real-name databases were the targets of massive breaches, impacting 35 million citizens. Users just transferred themselves to other platforms.
The same problems exist in Turkey, but with one difference: the courts have gone in a different direction, enforcing laws against online speech.
Gaurang “Gurlek” Gurung, an activist at the TIB, labelled social media as “definitely not a space for freedom.” The system he’s creating shows it.
