What Is Content Removal? – How Is Internet Content Removed?

When access to specific internet content or an entire website is blocked, unless access provider ISPs worldwide execute this restriction simultaneously, only a regional block materializes. For instance, access providers enforcing an access-blocking order rendered by Turkish judicial authorities restrict access to the content exclusively within their controlled territory (Türkiye). Internet content blocked in this manner continues to exist in its underlying hosting environment, remaining accessible from outside Türkiye without restriction, and from within Türkiye through alternative DNS resolvers, proxy servers, VPNs, TOR, and derivative circumvention tools.

This status of access-blocked internet content presents a severe detriment to victims affected by such content. Furthermore, if an entire website is blocked, third-party internet users affiliated with the site are collateral victims. Consequently, access-blocking orders operate merely as intermediate, interlocutory measures; where an unlawful state of affairs exists, the primary legal objective is the permanent removal of the infringing internet content itself. This operational process is designated as "content removal."

Under Law No. 5651, content removal is codified under the nomenclature of "removal of content from publication" and defined as "the extraction of content from servers or hosted media by content or hosting providers."

Under Law No. 5651, when judicial authorities issue a content removal order, our legal system does not adopt coercive technical mechanisms, such as hacking target servers. Rather, content removal orders are served upon natural or legal persons holding hosting provider status and/or data centers housing the physical or virtual servers, commanding them to remove the specified content. Non-compliance with such judicial orders entails criminal sanctions and may additionally form the statutory basis for administrative penalties imposed by the Information and Communication Technologies Authority (BTK). Pursuant to the statute, these orders are likewise transmitted to the content providers who originally published the material, initiating identical enforcement procedures. In judicial and administrative practice, these orders are—and ought to be—simultaneously served upon the ISPs operating the relevant websites and applications, although no explicit statutory mandate to that effect is codified in the law.