İFADE ÖZGÜRLÜĞÜNÜN EN YENİ İHLALİ: WİKİPEDİA’YA ERİŞİM ENGELİ

Abstract

One of the most important indicators of a state ruled with democracy is that individuals who are able to express themselves freely. This freedom secured its position under the concept of freedom of expression in the law. Freedom of expression, which is an inseparable part of democracy, requires communication tools be free. There is no doubt that freedom of expression should be provided in the internet and internet-based social media, which are the most effective means of communication today. However, Turkey has a tradition as blocking access to widely-used social media. This measure, previously applied to the giant sites like YouTube and Twitter, is still applied to Wikipedia today. A number of points that should be followed in limiting the freedom of expression have been determined over the years. In this assessment, it is mainly investigated whether the conditions are met -which also known as the three-stage test- that the limitation is regulated by the law and it is confined to a legitimate purpose and that the democratic society order requires this measure. The precedents of the European Court of Human Rights, which makes a significant contribution to the determination of these criteria, will be the main reference in the study. Taking into consideration the Constitutional Court's Twitter decision, blocking access to Wikipedia will be examined.

Keywords

• freedom of expression
• restrictions to freedom of expression
• internet
• social media
• access blocking
• wikipedia