As the new regulations on the legislation concerning social media platforms and online services commenced to be enforced as of 1 October 2020, the Information and Communication Technologies Authority (ICTA) published its procedures and principles regarding the implementation of obligations of social network providers under the decision number 2020/DK-İD/274 (“Decision”) on 2 October 2020. You may reach the Turkish text of the Decision via the link: https://www.resmigazete.gov.tr/eskiler/2020/10/20201002-5.pdf

The importance of the Decision lies on the provisions has been set on (i) the scope of the meaning of the Provider, (ii) qualification of the representative, (iii) representative’s obligation of providing contact information, (iv) individual’s removal requests, (v) data localization as mentioned-below:

First, if real and/or legal persons that include content for social interaction only in a certain part of the broadcast will not be meeting the definition of social media provider. Second; platforms, where content for social interaction is offered as a secondary and ancillary services, falls out of the scope. Especially personal platforms, e-commerce sites, and news sites are cited as example on the related article.
The representative(s) can be a real or legal person(s). It is obligated that if the representative(s) who is a legal entity needs to be established in Turkey and to have acquired legal personality according to Turkish Law. Furthermore, if the representative(s) is a real person they are required to be Turkish citizen.
The Provider is under the obligation of providing the representative(s) address, which also needs to be functional as a correspondence address, and e-mail address on the website where they can easily be seen by the user. In case there is any change in the listed contact information, these changes are immediately declared on the website.
The Provider can either accept the removal request or deny it by providing a justification where a person who believes a content violates their personal and privacy rights. On this topic, we would like to underline that in cases where a removal request has been issued in the Turkish language, the social network provider is under the obligation of responding the request in the Turkish language as well.
The biannual reports which under the obligation of the Provider also needs to be published on the social network provider’s website, free of any personal data. While localizing the data, the Provider shall comply with any kind of protection of personal data regulation that has been set by local legislations.