Turkey: Social Media Law’s Passage Raises Censorship Worries

Some of the 132 women laid off from the Flormar Cosmetics Company's Kocaeli factory, which the French cosmetics group Yves Rocher holds a 51-percent stake, check their mobile phones as they continue their daily protest outside the factory grounds after being dismissed on May 15, 2019, in Gebze on Jan. 29, 2019. Ozan Kose/AFP via Getty Images

ISTANBUL—Turkey’s parliament approved a law on July 29 that gives authorities greater power to regulate social media, despite concerns of growing censorship in a country where critical voices are already muted.

The law requires social media companies such as Facebook and Twitter to maintain representatives in Turkey to deal with complaints about content on their platforms. Companies refusing to designate an official representative could be subject to fines, advertising bans, and bandwidth reductions that would make their networks too slow to use.