Deniz Duru Aydin

Last week representatives from government, the corporate sector, civil society, and academia flocked to the Hague in the Netherlands for the Global Conference on Cyberspace (GCCS) to talk about freedom, growth, and security online. Despite two day’s worth of sessions and side events, little of substance was accomplished when it comes to protecting internet users’ freedom or bulwarking the security of the internet.

Last month, Twitter released its most recent transparency report, and it provides important insights into the evolving issue of freedom of expression online. The report confirms that Turkey has become a hotbed of censorship since Tayyip Erdogan was sworn in as President in August 2014 and launched a crackdown on the media.

A year and a half after the Snowden revelations, more technology companies and telcos are publishing transparency reports on government requests for user information and content removals. Several companies published transparency reports for the first time in early 2015, including Daum Kakao, Reddit, Medium, and Cheezburger. These are innovative companies — and they came up with novel approaches to presenting their data and policies.

The ninth annual UN Internet Governance Forum (IGF) took place in Turkey in early September, placing a global spotlight on the country’s digital rights record. As we have seen in recent years, the UN-mandated forum has a tendency to give rise to complicated and unexpected consequences in its host country.

This briefing note, prepared by APC and Access, highlights the key internet rights-related issues in the Human Rights Council’s agenda for the 27th session, as well as countries scrutinized in the Universal Periodic Review.

Activists involved in the organization of the first Gezi park protests in Turkey are currently standing trial, which Amnesty International describes as “a vindictive, politically motivated show trial without a shred of evidence of actual crimes.”

Following 67 days of censorship, YouTube was unblocked in Turkey on Tuesday following a ruling last week by the Constitutional Court that the ban violates freedom of expression. While Access welcomes the Court’s decision, the underlying legal frameworks allowing such censorship still exist.