The law establishing a 15-year-old age limit and bandwidth throttling on social media has gone into effect.

For social network providers, age verification and bandwidth throttling do not depend on the adoption of any bill. Both are already governed by Additional Article 4 of Law No. 5651, as amended by Law No. 7578 Amending the Social Services Law and Certain Other Laws. Whatever bill No. 2/4012, or any other bill, may introduce in this area, the change will be measured against the current text of Additional Article 4. Until a bill is enacted and published in the Official Gazette, it is this text that determines platforms' compliance obligations.

Which law introduced the age limit?

The source is bill No. 2/3566, submitted by AK Party MPs. The bill was submitted to the Speaker's Office of the Grand National Assembly of Türkiye (TBMM) on 4 March 2026. The lead committee, the Health, Family, Labour and Social Affairs Committee, issued its report on 2 April 2026. The secondary committees, Justice and Digital Media, did not issue reports. The Plenary adopted the text on 22 April 2026, at the 85th sitting of the 4th legislative year of the 28th parliamentary term.

The Law was sent to the Presidency on 23 April 2026 and approved on 30 April 2026. Law No. 7578 was published in the Official Gazette (Official Gazette No. 33240, 1 May 2026). The provisions amending Law No. 5651 are set out in Articles 22 and 23 of Law No. 7578.

What is required of social network providers today?

The core sentence of Additional Article 4(7) of Law No. 5651, as amended by Article 22 of Law No. 7578, reads:

"A social network provider may not provide services to children who have not reached the age of fifteen and is obliged to take the necessary measures, including age verification, to ensure that such services are not provided."

The provision contains two distinct obligations. The first is an obligation of result: services will not be provided to children under 15. The second is an obligation to take measures: the provider must adopt measures to secure that result, and age verification is one of them. Under the same paragraph, the provider must also take "the necessary measures for providing a differentiated service specific to" children who have reached the age of 15, and must publish the measures it has taken on its own website.

Law No. 7578 also added new paragraphs to Additional Article 4. Some of the obligations in these paragraphs apply to all social network providers. Others cover only those with more than ten million daily accesses from Türkiye. The table sets out the obligations by addressee:

Parental control tools must be "clear, comprehensible and easy to use". Additional Article 4(20) also lists the minimum content of these tools. Parents must be able to control account settings. Paid transactions must be made subject to parental permission or approval. Usage time must also be capable of being monitored and limited.

Additional Article 4(7) lists age verification among the mandatory measures but does not specify the method by which verification is to be carried out. The choice of method is left to the provider, and that choice also determines which personal data will be collected from users and to what extent. For this reason, age verification infrastructure should be designed together with KVKK compliance work under Law No. 6698 on the Protection of Personal Data (KVKK).

What are the stages of bandwidth throttling?

Article 22 of Law No. 7578 broadened the cross-references in the sanctions paragraph of Additional Article 4. The words "and nineteenth" in the paragraph were replaced with ", nineteenth, twentieth, twenty-first and twenty-third". A staged sanctions regime was also added to the paragraph. The chain begins with service on the social network provider of a notice of an administrative fine:

At the third stage, the judge is not bound by the 90% figure. The judge may set a lower rate depending on the nature of the service, but that rate may not be below 50%. The BTK President may challenge the judgeship's decisions under Law No. 5271 on Criminal Procedure (CMK). Access providers implement the decisions "immediately and within four hours at the latest" of notification.

The chain is reversible. When the provider fulfils the obligation, the advertising ban is lifted and the judgeship's decisions become "automatically void". The purpose of throttling is to secure compliance, so once compliance is achieved the measure must also come to an end.

Under the previous regime, throttling was tied to the representative obligation. Additional Article 4, inserted by Law No. 7253 in 2020, provided for 50% bandwidth throttling three months after the advertising ban where no representative had been appointed. Article 22 of the BTK Board's Procedures and Principles on Social Network Providers dated 28 March 2023 likewise tied throttling to the obligation to appoint a representative. Law No. 7578 increased the number of obligations linked to the chain. For a provider, having appointed a representative no longer eliminates the risk of throttling.

Is breach of the age obligation linked to the advertising ban?

This point is debatable. The sanctions paragraph does not expressly refer to paragraph seven, which governs the age obligation. The references in the paragraph to the "nineteenth, twentieth, twenty-first and twenty-third" paragraphs must also be read according to the numbering that followed the insertion of the new paragraphs. On this reading, paragraph twenty corresponds to parental control tools, paragraph twenty-one to deceptive advertising, and paragraph twenty-three to the obligations of large platforms.

Whether breach of the under-15 ban in Additional Article 4(7) is directly linked to the advertising ban and throttling chain depends on reading the full text of the paragraph and the chain of cross-references as a whole. For compliance planning, the prudent assumption should be as follows: a shortcoming in parental control tools may arise together with a shortcoming in age verification. In that case, the chain can be triggered at least through the parental control obligation.

What has changed for gaming platforms?

Article 23 of Law No. 7578 added Additional Article 5 to Law No. 5651. This article establishes a separate sanctions regime for gaming platforms, with lower rates. A gaming platform that fails to fulfil its obligations may first be fined TRY 1 million to 10 million, and then TRY 10 million to 30 million. If compliance is still not achieved, its bandwidth may be throttled first by 30%, and then by up to 50%.

Foreign-based gaming platforms with more than one hundred thousand daily accesses from Türkiye must also appoint a representative in Türkiye. This distinction matters for games with chat and community features. Whether a service qualifies as a social network provider or a gaming platform determines which set of obligations and sanctions applies.

How could a pending bill change this regime?

A bill does not change the text of Law No. 5651 unless it is adopted by the Plenary and published in the Official Gazette. Provisions such as a specialised competent court for account closure disputes or an exemption from court fees are also subject to this rule. Such provisions can apply only once the bill containing them is enacted, and from the entry-into-force date set out in the law.

Docket numbers restart in each parliamentary term. For example, in the 27th term, docket number 2/4012 was assigned to the Bill Amending the Social Insurance and General Health Insurance Law submitted by Malatya MP Veli Ağbaba and one other MP. A bill should therefore be tracked not by its docket number alone, but together with its parliamentary term.

As of November 2026, the opposition bill on the same subject is at committee stage. Bill No. 2/3913, the Bill on the Protection of Children and Young People in the Digital Environment, whose first signatory is Yeni Parti (New Party) İzmir MP Ahmet Tuncay Özkan, was submitted to the Speaker's Office on 2 October 2026. Since 5 October 2026, the bill has been pending before the lead committee, the Digital Media Committee, and the secondary committees, the Justice and National Education Committees.

The bill underlying Law No. 7578 was adopted roughly seven weeks after it was submitted. The lead committee issued its report within a month, and the secondary committees' reports were not awaited. This timeline offers a benchmark for bills from the governing party. Earmarking a compliance budget on the basis of the content of a bill pending in committee, however, would be premature before the bill reaches the lead committee report stage.

What should social network providers do now?

1. Rebuild your registration and log-in flow in line with Additional Article 4(7) of Law No. 5651. Select and document an age verification measure that ensures services are not provided to users under 15, and limit the personal data to be processed in line with that choice.

2. Define the content of the differentiated service for children who have reached 15. Publish the measures you have taken on your own website, as required by Additional Article 4(7).

3. Provide parental control tools that meet the three functions in Additional Article 4(20): control of account settings, making paid transactions subject to parental permission or approval, and monitoring and limiting usage time.

4. Put in writing your review and removal process for blocking deceptive advertising, in line with Additional Article 4(21).

5. If you have more than ten million daily accesses from Türkiye, set up an uninterrupted workflow to implement decisions issued under Article 8/A in cases where delay would be prejudicial within one hour. Also deploy a technical measure that prevents removed content from being re-uploaded (Additional Article 4(22) and 4(23)).

6. When an administrative fine is served, start the clock that same day. There are 30 days until the advertising ban, 3 months until the application for 50% throttling, and 30 days until the next stage. Keep records showing that compliance has been achieved ready at every stage.

7. If your service qualifies as a gaming platform, carry out a separate assessment under Additional Article 5. If daily accesses from Türkiye exceed one hundred thousand, fulfil the obligation to appoint a representative, and track bills such as No. 2/3913 by parliamentary term and docket number.