Speaking at a criminology panel at the Istanbul University's Law Department Ay
asserted that there was no increase in the frequency of child pornography
crimes in Turkey, as commonly believed by the media and the public. Ay said
this was a misunderstanding caused by a recent rise in the number of operations
made possible by newly established police units on computer crimes. Ay also
asserted that, as a principle, any crime committed on the Internet is traceable
through the digital traces left and any server location can now be precisely
mapped to within meters of its location.
Legal challenges: Turkey currently has no specialized law against child
pornography offenders. Although generating, distributing, duplicating and
owning child pornography is criminalized under article 226 of the Turkish Penal
Code (TCK), certain gaps in the law have yet to be eliminated. For example, the
legal responsibilities and liabilities of Internet Service Providers (ISPs)
with regards to handing IP information to the police are currently not clearly
defined in the law, which experts say is an obstacle that should be removed
immediately. Under the current laws, it is impossible to penalize the country's
120 ISPs for holding back data that could lead to the arrest of culprits. Yusuf
Uzunay, an IT network specialist who worked with the Turkish Police in
operations against online child pornography-related crimes says, "Although no
ISP openly withheld data citing client privacy, from my experience working with
the police I can say that we encountered ISPs saying they didn't keep logs
older than three months or their logs were accidentally deleted." Turkey has
still not signed the European Council Cyber Crimes Convention, which went into
force on July 1, 2004. It is a key document in penalizing the production,
distribution, importing, exporting, offering, sale or ownership of material
containing child pornography. The document would also regulate service provider
responsibility, ruling out ISP excuses for not turning in data to the police.
Another key regulation to enhance police effectiveness in combating online sex
crimes against children is a new regulation on information crimes, which is
still pending at the Ministry of Justice. Officials say the law's adoption
would also significantly help increase the police and judiciary's effectiveness
in fighting child pornography. Despite the existence of legal gaps that still
need to be addressed, Turkey is not entirely unprepared to handle child
pornography offenders. According to Associate Professor of Law Adem Sözüer at
Istanbul University, generating, producing, duplicating, storing, distribution
and ownership of child pornography is criminalized under the new TCK. Sözüer,
who personally contributed to drafting the new penal code, says punishments
stipulated in the law for child pornography offenders are twice heavier than in
most other countries. According to Superintendent Ay, just ownership of child
pornography material is punishable with jail sentences of two to five years,
and monetary fines corresponding to 500 days in jail, which he says is "severe"
punishment.
Brief history of online child pornography in Turkey: The Internet became widely
accessible in Turkey in 1995. An Information Crimes Commission under the
National Police Department was established in 1998. The first arrest in
distributing child pornography content was made in 2000 in the city of Konya
upon information from Interpol. A hundred people running Web sites have been
caught until today. In 2004, the police carried out operations in 11 cities
against offenders while the operations had spread to 50 towns by 2006.
Tracking them down: Turkish police are working with a number of international
bodies to prevent sexual crimes against children such as the Southeast European
Cooperative Initiative (SECI) fighting trans-border crimes, the U.N. Office on
Drugs and Crime, the U.S.-based National Center for Missing & Exploited
Children and Interpol. Currently, two units under the National Police
Department Order and Safety Department, namely the Human Trafficking and Sexual
Crimes Department and the Information Crimes Department, are fighting against
spreading child pornography on the Internet, acting on information sent from
Interpol. The units hold operations against Web site owners and are
continuously monitoring the Internet to track down child pornography Web sites.
Seventeen expert officers are monitoring the Internet daily for 17 hours a day
at the Ankara Police Order and Safety Directorate's Department against Human
Trafficking and Sexual Crimes. They are currently working on 100 files with IP
numbers that belong to individuals who visit child pornography sites or who are
running such sites.
