Thanks for your question, Beste. Yes, one definitely needs to take into consideration the restrictive Internet regulation in Turkey. Even before the passing of the new Internet law, the legal framework presented serious challenges to online speech (as in blocking of thousands of websites, prosecution of online users, etc). During the Gezi protests, the Prime Minister notoriously called Twitter a "menace" and dozens of Twitter users were arrested on charges of threatening public safety and order. As these surveillance/censorship practices (before and during Gezi) show, the emancipatory potential of social media is limited or may be limited in myriad ways. So although I celebrate the opening up of new discursive spaces such as Capul TV and others, I am also wary about the governmental, judicial limitations. Now the new Internet law, which was passed a few weeks ago, is likely to muzzle online users further: the authorities now have the ability to block web pages or websites without court order and they can require service providers to store user data for up to 2 years and share it with the government. Needless to say, the new law creates a very suppressive online environment and increases the government’s surveillance capacity of online users—from citizens to journalists. All this begs the question: what about the implications of the new law on outlets such as Capul TV? At the moment, the government seems to be more interested in websites or social media users who publish the wiretapped conversations that point out to a massive corruption scandal or any other content that is specifically critical of its policies. Capul TV seems to be under the radar for now, but because it is all about anti-government resistance, it may very well be subject to legal hounding by the authorities any time.

Yes, this is an important point. Media companies in Turkey have always had intricate political, economic ties with the governments. These “unholy alliances” if you like became the norm in the 80s and 90s when media ownership went through a transformation. Business tycoons bought media companies to use them as bargaining tools with the government for contracts, subsidies, and privatization deals, which in turn made them extremely vulnerable to pressures from the government and diminished their editorial independence. Although government manipulation did not start with the AKP, it has definitely worsened. It is primarily because the sticks and carrots are much bigger now. In 2009, the largest media conglomerate was slapped with a massive tax fine because of its critical reporting, and this incident served to silence other media companies as well. On the other hand, the AKP cultivated its loyal media bloc by distributing lucrative contracts or facilitating the sales of troubled newspapers, television channels to its supporters.