# Turkey adopts criminal provision on false or misleading information

Date: 2022

Turkey adopted amendments in October 2022 that created a new offence for publicly disseminating false or misleading information under conditions defined by the legislation. In an urgent joint opinion with the [Council of Europe](/organizations/council-of-europe)’s Directorate General of Human Rights and [Rule of Law](/drivers/rule-of-law), CDL-AD(2022)034, endorsed at its 21–22 October 2022 plenary session, the Venice Commission assessed the draft provision and warned that its vague wording could interfere with freedom of expression and create a chilling effect. In May 2022, ARTICLE 19 had already analysed the government’s announced disinformation proposal as an extension of state control over online speech built on the 2020 platform law. The record concerns the enactment of the criminal provision rather than any single later prosecution. Criminal penalties carry a different mechanism from the 2017 Wikipedia block or the 2020 platform law: users may change what they publish because of uncertainty about whether authorities will characterize a statement as misleading. This does not imply that every enforcement action under the law is necessarily illegitimate.

## People

- Recep Tayyip Erdoğan: https://factrail.ai/people/recep-tayyip-erdogan

## Drivers

- Digital Censorship: https://factrail.ai/drivers/digital-censorship

## Sources

- https://www.coe.int/en/web/venice-commission/-/cdl-ad-2022-034-e
- https://www.article19.org/resources/regulation-of-social-media-platforms-in-turkey-internet-law/

## Methodology

https://factrail.ai/methodology

Canonical: https://factrail.ai/facts/tr-disinformation-law-2022