Turkey’s digital surveillance policy has been shaped by five events: the 2013 Gezi protests, the leakage of wiretapped government conversations (the “17-25 December incident”), the country’s growing involvement in the Syrian Civil War and the subsequent refugee influx, successive terrorist attacks through 2015-16, and the failed coup attempt in July 2016.
Russia’s digital surveillance evolution owes much to the 2011-12 mass protests against Vladimir Putin’s re-ascent to the Presidency in May 2012. Multiple “social media laws” passed after May 2012 have strengthened state monopoly on the media environment, both traditional and digital.
In his article for Turkish Policy Quarterly, Centre Visiting Research Fellow Akin Unver examines surveillance powers in both countries.
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