TikTok ready to appear at Turkish Parliament's Digital Media Commission

Emir Gelen, TikTok's head of Public Policy for the Middle East, Africa, and Türkiye, expressed willingness to appear before the Turkish Parliament's Digital Media Commission again if invited, saying, "We will continue our efforts to ensure TikTok remains a safe platform for all our users."

He responded to the commission's chairperson Huseyin Yayman's statement regarding discrepancies between TikTok's responses and practices, saying they had previously attended invitations from the commission in January 2022 and December 2023 to contribute to the discussions and answer questions.

Gelen emphasized their commitment to platform security, noting that their moderation teams work diligently to ensure TikTok content complies with Community Guidelines. Proactively, they removed 98.9% of rule-violating content in Türkiye, well above the global average of 96.7%.

Parliament made sanctions warning to TikTok

Yayman highlighted the wave of disinformation on various social media platforms before the local elections held on March 31, saying that there was incitement on these platforms regarding street animals, refugees, the economy and the cost of living.

Expressing that there is "global malevolence" in digital media and social media, he announced they will address this issue again in the coming period.

'TikTok national security issue'

Yayman said that the statements made by TikTok representatives in parliament in December last year did not satisfy the commission members and the public.

He explained that digital networks have their own self-regulation mechanisms, which are inadequate. "Our people tell us, 'This TikTok is a national security issue, we want this place shut down," he said.

"We will call TikTok representatives to Parliament again in the coming days. Because we see a difference between the answers they gave us and the practices they implemented. We see some promises, but these promises are not kept. We do not approve of these at all. We can take measures ranging from bandwidth restriction, advertising and trade bans to license revocation in coordination with our Ministry of Transport and Information Technologies and Communication Authority," Yayman said.

Yayman underscored that the fight against disinformation is a nonpartisan issue and emphasized that they will never back down on it.

Source: Newsroom