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Lumen Researcher Interview Series: Turkish NGO EngelliWeb

Recently, the Lumen team spoke with Yaman Akdeniz and Ozan Güven, founder and senior researcher respectively at Engelliweb, a project within the organization İFÖD was "established by expert lawyers, academicians and human right activists in August 2017 as a non-profit and non-governmental organization which aims to protect and foster the right to freedom of opinion and expression in Turkey."

EngelliWeb produces an annual report with statistical information on blocked websites, news articles (URL-based) and sociaꦬl media content in Turkey, which relies in part on research done within Lumen's database. The re🌄port primarily addresses the effects of the application of Turkish Law No. 5651 on "Regulation of Publications on the Internet and Suppression of Crimes Committed by Means of Such Pub💟lications". Notably, EngelliWeb's reports are one of the only publicly available sources of any information on which websites have been blocked, or content removed.

Can you give us some background to your annual assessment report on blocked websites, news articles and social media content in Turkey? What led you to conduct this research?The relevant government agencies as well as the official government sources do not publish or reveal the number of blocked websites, news articles as well as social media content from Turkey. The authorities also do not publish the number of decisions issues and by whom they are issued as there are several administrative bodies which can issue blocking decisions in addition to the judiciary in Turkey. Furthermore, lack of judicial transparency means that the blocking and removal decisions are also not published and they are not publicly available. As we work in the field of Internet freedom in a specialized freedom of expression association, we decided to conduct detailed and extensive research in this field as we believe in transparency and we are trying to achieve transparency in this field.

• What motivated you to look for the takedown notices in the Lumen Database as a part of your report, and what was your research methodology?

We obtain blocking decisions related to Turkey from a number of different sources. We found some of the missing decisions that were important to our research through the Lumen database during 2015. Since then we systematically started to rely on the database and also incorporated the API to our research needs and become almost daily users with a locally automated system.

• How did the availability of notices enhance your ability to talk about internet censorship regime in Turkey?

We are unique in the sense that our EngelliWeb reports become the primary source for Internet censorship documentation and statistical data involving Turkey across the globe. Journalists, activists, NGOs and politicians rely on our work on a regular basis. As the reports are published both in Turkish and English, broader access to the reports is ensured.

• What alternative approach would you have taken if the takedown notices weren’t available. Would that approach have been as effective as the current one to a reader’s mind in order to showcase the increasing censorship in Turkey?

We can identify the blocked content even if the decisions themselves are not available. However, the decisions are important to assess the nature of the decisions, who requested them, whether the decisions are reasoned and whether the judges applied the relevant judicial criteria developed by the Constitutional Court as well as the European Court of Human Rights. In the absence of the decisions themselves, our research would have been limited and restricted to only statistical assessment.

• Do you ever hear criticism of Lumen in Turkey, whether because you cite to it or otherwise?

No, that has never been the case. We are unsure though how much Lumen is known but we know that it has not been subject of any access blocking decisions so far.

• How did EngelliWeb first learn about and become involved with Lumen?

We were aware of Lumen since its inception when it was called “Chilling Effects”. However, we started to rely on the database to obtain access blocking decisions since early 2015 and we got our API token in November 2015.

• At which stage in your research does Lumen usually feature? Does the database assist in:
  • identifying a problem,
  • providing evidence that the problem exists, or
  • does it feature when finding solutions to a pre-identified problem?

We primarily rely on the Lumen database to obtain Turkey-related blocking decisions which then assists us identifying blocking trends, platforms, issue of public interest involved as well as information about who requests the blocking decisions.

• You have mentioned that the report was a result of monthly scanning of over 202 million domain names, weekly scanning of 3.7 million news articles etc. What are some other research tools that actively featured in your work that enabled effective research on your part?

The methodology of this our study includes the monthly scanning of approximately 207 million domain names; the weekly scanning of 11 million current news articles from 90 different news websites; the monthly scanning of approximately 33 million archived news articles; the real-time connectivity tracking and monitoring of whether 175 different domain names, including Wikipedia, YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, and certain news websites are blocked from Turkey; the identification of the blocked, removed, or country withheld content including videos, accounts, and social media content items from Turkey by using the YouTube and Twitter Application Programming Interface (“API”); the identification and analysis of access-blocking orders submitted to the Lumen database by using its application programming interface and the tools developed by Lumen for researchers; as well as the analysis of the access-blocking orders sent by certain news websites to the İFÖD team.

• How often do you use Lumen in your research and other efforts?

We search Turkey related notices in Lumen database four times a day with the help of the Lumen API. After a thorough analysis of the notices & uploaded documents, we share politically motivated blocking decisions with the public through our Twitter account () and our website ().

• What additional tools/ features would enhance your ability to use Lumen?

Searchable supporting documents that are attached to the notices (e.g. court orders) would enhance our ability to use the Lumen database. Uploaded documents may go through optical character recognition (“OCR”) and researchers can even search within the documents. Moreover, companies that submits court orders do not provide enough information in the notices such as “jurisdiction country” and “targeted URLs”, so limited searchable information makes it very hard to find notices in the database.

As scholar(s) and activists in technology and internet laws, how important, in your opinion, is transparency regarding takedowns through notice sharing?

For the kind of work we do, transparency is crucial. However, there is lack of judicial transparency in Turkey and that is why Lumen is very helpful. However, we notice that the platforms that submit decisions to the database do not always and regularly submit all the decisions to the database. Certain decisions that we are aware of, do not necessarily end up in the database. Furthermore, Facebook does not participate and contribute to the Lumen database which is a significant loss considering the number of decisions the platform receives.

• Any final thoughts?

We love you Lumen :)