Turkey Bans Social Media for Under-15s — Child Protection or Surveillance?
— Agiliton
— 9 min read
On the night of April 22, 2026, Turkey’s parliament passed a bill restricting social media for children under 15. The headline reads like the ones from Athens, Nicosia or Paris earlier in the month — another European country drawing an age line for social platforms. The details read very differently.
Unlike the EU’s zero-knowledge approach, Turkey’s law is tightly coupled to the national ID system, adds a one-hour takedown mandate for large platforms, and arrives on top of a parallel draft that would require every adult user to log in with an e-Devlet (national ID) credential. That is why press-freedom groups, law professors and opposition MPs are calling it something other than a child-protection law.
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