Turkiye: Adopted Bill on Amendments to the Turkish Commercial Code including measures to establish a notification procedure before removing content or blocking access

On 23 May 2024, the Bill on Amendments to the Turkish Commercial Code including measures to establish a notification procedure before removing content or blocking access, was adopted by the Grand National Assembly of Turkey. The Bill amends Law No. 6502 on Consumer Protection following the Constitutional Court's decisions from 13/9/2023 on the cases E:2022/70 and K:2023/152, which annulled the twelfth paragraph of Article 77 of Law No. 6502 that lists procedures set for the use of the authority for blocking access granted to the Advertising Council, due to contradiction with the necessity and proportionality principles. In particular, the Bill amends the procedures for removing content or blocking access under the powers of the Advertising Council. If non-compliance is detected online, the Advertising Board will have the authority to initiate contact electronically using various resources such as domain names, IP addresses, and other relevant details from the internet page to request content removal. If the content remains unremoved 24 hours after this notification, the Advertising Council may decide to block access. In situations where it is unfeasible to contact the content owner, the board may directly opt to block access. The decision will have to be forwarded to the Access Providers Union for execution. Initially, access restriction targets only the specific content involved in the violation. However, if it is technically impractical to limit the block to just the content or if such targeted blocking does not address the violation, broader measures may be taken to block access to the entire website.