TÜRKİYE’S TRIPARTITE DIGITAL REGULATION: A KANTIAN DEONTOLOGICAL ANALYSIS OF PDPL, LAW NO. 5651, AND LAW NO. 4054
Öz
Turkey presents itself as a GDPR-aligned digital governance actor, yet simultaneously operates three legally inconsistent instruments: the Law on Protection of Personal Data (KVKK), which partially mirrors EU data protection standards; Law No. 5651, which authorises administrative platform blocking without prior judicial authorisation and criminalises broadly defined online expression; and the draft amendment to Competition Law No. 4054, which adopts Digital Markets Act gatekeeper thresholds while remaining silent on individual rights. No existing scholarship has analysed these three instruments together through a unified ethical framework. This article applies Kantian deontological theory, specifically the categorical imperative and the principle of treating persons as ends in themselves, to evaluate the internal coherence of Turkey's tripartite digital regulatory framework. It argues that the KVKK partially honours deontological principles, Law No. 5651 structurally violates them, and the draft amendment to Law No. 4054 is deontologically silent in ways that compound the contradiction. This tripartite inconsistency, the article concludes, provides a structural explanation for Turkey's continued failure to obtain EU adequacy recognition, and resolving it requires targeted legislative reforms to each instrument grounded in deontological principles. The findings contribute an original analytical framework for identifying jurisdictional contradictions in GDPR-adjacent digital regulatory regimes and offer three concrete reform recommendations for Turkish digital governance.
Anahtar Kelimeler
Kaynakça
- Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union [2000] OJ C364/1
- European Convention on Human Rights (as amended by Protocol No 14, CETS No 194, 2010)
- Law No 5651 on the Regulation of Publications on the Internet and Combating Crimes Committed Through Such Publications (Türkiye), enacted 4 May 2007, as amended by Law No 6518 (2014), Law No 7253 (Official Gazette No 31202, 29 July 2020), and Law No 7418 (Official Gazette No 31987, 18 October 2022)
- Law No 6698 on the Protection of Personal Data (Türkiye) (PDPL), Official Gazette No 29677, 7 April 2016, as amended by Law No 7499, Official Gazette No 32487, 2 March 2024
- Regulation (EU) 2016/679 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 27 April 2016 on the protection of natural persons about the processing of personal data [2016] OJ L119/1 (GDPR)
- Regulation (EU) 2022/1925 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 14 September 2022 on contestable and fair markets in the digital sector [2022] OJ L265/1 (Digital Markets Act)
- Turkish Competition Authority, Draft Amendment to Law No 4054 on the Protection of Competition (October 2022, revised November 2023 and June 2024) (unenacted as of May 2026)
- Turkish Penal Code (TCK), art 217A, inserted by Law No 7418 (Official Gazette No 31987, 18 October 2022)
Ayrıntılar
Birincil Dil
İngilizce
Konular
Hukuk (Diğer)
Bölüm
Araştırma Makalesi
Yazarlar
Nasir Qadri
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Türkiye
Yayımlanma Tarihi
31 Temmuz 2026
Gönderilme Tarihi
13 Mayıs 2026
Kabul Tarihi
20 Temmuz 2026
Yayımlandığı Sayı
Yıl 2026 Sayı: 32