Events
Applicant, who is a lecturer at the faculty of law, is a non-profit non-governmental organization cyber-rights.org ‘s flour and Bilgiedinmehakki.org he is the founder of the website. The applicant applied to the Information Technologies and Communication Authority (BTK) in accordance with the provisions of the Information Acquisition Law and requested information about statistics related to decisions to block access to Internet sites. The applicant, in this application, firstly, 8 of the Law No. 5651. for the catalog crimes listed in the article, detailed information on the statistics of access blocking ex officio and judicial categories separately was requested, secondly, detailed information on the number of access blocking decisions made outside the scope of the catalog. Crimes. The applicant filed an objection to the Information Acquisition Evaluation Board (Board) regarding the rejection decision of the BTK. The Board rejected this objection as not justified.
Upon this, the applicant filed a lawsuit with the BTK for the cancellation of the decision to reject the application for obtaining information. The BTK, on the other hand, suggested that the case should be dismissed on the grounds that it was not financially possible to accept the applicant’s request in accordance with the legislation from a procedural point of view, since the case should be opened at the Council of State. and he demanded that the case be dismissed. The administrative court rejected the case, and the Council of State upheld this decision on appeal.
Allegations
The applicant claimed that his freedom of expression had been violated due to the refusal of his request to obtain information on statistics related to the decisions to block access to Internet sites.
The Court’s Assessment
Considering that the applicant is an academic working in the field of Internet law and human rights, it is a fact that his activities require protection similar to the protection provided by freedom of the press, that a request for disputed information is a prerequisite for the expression of thought from the applicant’s point of view, and information that needs to be accessed so that it can be used in the process of thought formation.
In the concrete case, regarding the applicant’s first and second request, there is no situation in which the applicant creates a significant workload by requesting information from the administration while he can filter and compile the information requested from public sources himself, nor is there a situation that creates a significant workload by requesting information from public sources. more detailed parameters in case the information already published by the administration is not considered sufficient according to the parameters selected by the administration, or information that is not even in the possession of the administration is requested.
It was assessed that the request for information on access blocking statistics made in order to contribute to the discussion on a topic of public concern was necessary for the applicant, who is an academic working on freedom of expression and gaming on the Internet. He took an active role in non-governmental organizations fighting against censorship on the Internet due to his work against violations of freedom of expression on the Internet.
For the reasons explained, the Constitutional Court ruled that the freedom of expression had been violated.
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