18th Criminal Court of Peace of Instanbul Anadolu, Objecting Party: Twitter Inc., No. 2014/98 [English Version]

Following a decision of the 5th Criminal Court of Peace of Istanbul Anadolu, TIB banned two Twitter accounts, discussing the government related corruption news that appeared in the mainstream and social media in Turkey in March 2014. The claimants, a Minister and one of his sons, requested the Court to ban access to the posts published through the Twitter account "Hirsiza oy yok", "@oyyokhirsiza" ("@No vote for thief), which allegedly published content that constituted an explicit violation of the claimants' personal rights. Twitter objected to this decision, since the content published fall under the scope of media freedom of speech.The 18th Criminal Court of Peace accepted Twitter's arguments and cancelled the previous decision, since it was in contrast with the Turkish Constitution. The 18th Criminal Court also noted that the claim alleging violation of personal rights could not be received, because "the claimants are a former Minister . . . and his son. They are political figures, whose duties require public transparency and to be subject to public control."