Today, we are pleased to announce an important victory for freedom of expression online: we beat Turkish President Erdoğan in the Turkish Constitutional Court.
For almost a decade now, we have received regular takedown demands from Turkey (officially known as the Republic of Türkiye). Often, the reported sites contain political speech that are critical of the Turkish government or other public figures.
In 2015 we received one such order, relating to a site that contained allegations of corruption leveled at President Erdoğan. The judgment was based on a supposed violation of the president’s personal rights under Article 9 of Turkish Law No. 5651 (a provision that has since been found to be unconstitutional). As a result, we had no choice but to block the site in the region, or risk all visitors from Turkey being prevented from accessing WordPress.com—and the hundreds of millions of sites that we host.
With the support of the blogger, we swiftly appealed the First Instance Court’s decision on the basis that such a restriction was an undue interference in freedom of expression. Unfortunately (but not surprisingly), this argument was rejected.
At Automattic, we firmly believe in the importance of freedom of expression—and we weren’t about to let this clear attempt at political censorship go by without a fight. Given the nature of the allegations involved, we decided to strike back, and petitioned the Turkish Constitutional Court. While the prospects of success seemed low, we were fully prepared to take the case all the way to the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg if necessary.
Eight years after we submitted our original appeal, we finally received word that the Constitutional Court had accepted our arguments, and unanimously concluded that both the user’s freedom of expression (as provided for under Article 26 of the Turkish Constitution) and their right to an effective remedy (as provided for under Article 40) had been violated.
Do not underestimate the significance of this outcome. Victories of this kind in Turkey are rare, and prior to this case, we had spent almost $100,000 USD appealing 14 different takedown orders, without any success. Don’t just take our word for it, though. Here’s what Nik Williams—a policy and campaigns officer from Index on Censorship, a nonprofit that campaigns for and defends free expression—has to say about this case:
Free expression victories in Turkey are few and far between so this decision by the Constitutional Court should be celebrated. It offers a clear and robust refutation of Erdoğan’s erosion of free expression. International human rights standards are unequivocal—speaking out and challenging power is a central tenet of democracy. We hope it gives the Turkish authorities a chance to reevaluate their approach to free expression, both online and off, while also sending a powerful signal to everyone in Turkey who seeks to speak out in the public interest.
In the past, we’ve worked with the Electronic Frontier Foundation on our approach to combating censorship in the region. Jillian York, EFF’s director for international freedom of expression, also shares thoughts about this important case:
EFF is thrilled to hear that Automattic went up against the Turkish government on a takedown demand and won. It is vital that companies continue to challenge wrongful takedown orders such as the one cited in ‘Abdullah Kaya and Others with application number 2016/1430.’ We encourage platforms to implement the guidelines laid out in the Santa Clara Principles on Transparency and Accountability in Content Moderation.
While this case demonstrates that victories are possible, the length of the proceedings means that justice was not properly served, and we still face a long battle ahead for freedom of expression online—both in Turkey and beyond. Increasingly, we see the fragmentation of access to information as the result of national legislation and legal judgments concerning speech. At Automattic, our mission is to democratize publishing. We have always pushed back against government overreach and will continue to stand up for the fundamental rights of users. We call upon other platforms to do the same.
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