The proposed law on influence peddling has been passed by the Justice Commission of the Turkish Grand National Assembly, but before it reaches the General Assembly, it would be useful to explain how the international regulations on which the law is based have been distorted.

Fuat Midas, head of the legal department of the Undersecretariat of National Intelligence Organisation (MİT), said that espionage had become much more complex than the exchange of secret documents as in the past and that new regulations were needed to ensure national security. In other words, neither the Foreign Agents Act (FARA) that has been in force in the US since 1938, nor the one introduced in Russia in 2012, nor the one that caused an uproar in Georgia last year was taken as an example. In a way, the name of the law in Turkey misdirected the discussion. The laws in the US, Russia and Georgia require media and civil society organisations that receive all or part of their funding from abroad, as well as those who work for them, to be registered as 'foreign agents'. This, of course, undermines democracy and freedom of expression, as it means that journalists and human rights defenders will be labelled and subject to different sanctions. However, the bill we are discussing today has no such content. They must have realised this because last week the deputy leader of the MHP, İsmail Özdemir, presented a new bill to revoke the licences of broadcasters who receive funding. It remains to be seen how seriously this proposal will be taken and how it will be put on the agenda.

The proposal on the agenda, which will be added to Article 339 of the Turkish Penal Code, expands espionage and turns it into a vague and ambiguous offence. It provides for 'imprisonment from three to seven years for those who commit crimes against the security or domestic or foreign political interests of the state in accordance with the strategic interests or instructions of a foreign state or organisation'. In defence of the law, Fuat Midas says: '... in many Western countries, the definition of 'espionage' and the acts considered as 'espionage' have undergone a great diversification. I can mention very recently, for example, that in the Netherlands a similar law is about to be adopted, with a prison sentence of up to six years; there is a similar law in the United Kingdom, and it is being introduced in Belgium.

Let's see if this is true.

WHAT IS THE SITUATION IN THE NETHERLANDS AND THE UK?

In the Netherlands, the law regulating the National Intelligence and Security Service (AIVD) and the Military Intelligence and Security Service (MIVD) authorised intelligence services to monitor citizens or organisations if it was related to an investigative task, there was a threat to national security, the intrusion was proportionate to the target and there was no alternative way to obtain the information in question. The Temporary Cyber Operations Act, to which Midas referred, came into force in 2024 and extended the powers of the intelligence services to prevent cyber-attacks. One member of the Investigatory Powers Committee resigned in protest at this highly controversial change. Earlier, in 2021, the National Coordinator for Counter-Terrorism and Security (NCTV) proposed another law to extend the powers of the intelligence services, but it was withdrawn after objections from civil society organisations. In 2022, an Amsterdam court ruled that Frank van der Linde, who had been spied on by NCTV and the Dutch police using fake Twitter, Facebook and Instagram accounts, whose personal data had been shared with municipalities, foreign security services, Europol and Interpol, and whose freedom of movement had been restricted by being placed on the terrorist list, had suffered injustice and was entitled to compensation. During the protests in November 2022 and March 2023, NCTV was found to have monitored the online activities and correspondence of dozens of civil society organisations and individuals, including climate, women's rights and anti-racist movements. NCTV admitted that it stopped this surveillance in 2021 because it did not have an adequate legal basis. The latest law seeks to extend these powers. It has again been met with serious protests and condemnation. As you can see, there is no vague definition such as punishing activities against 'internal and external political interests', there is an increase in surveillance powers, and there is a law that works in the Netherlands but not here. 

In the UK, the Online Security Bill, which allows for the online surveillance of journalists and civil society organisations, sparked reactions from civil society organisations, academics and cyber experts. Section 122, known as the 'spying clause', included a private sector authorisation for mass surveillance of private digital communications. The bill, which will come into force in October 2023, will remove Article 122 and place responsibility on platforms to prevent hate speech. The Investigatory Powers Act 2016, known as the Snoopers' Charter, which allows state agencies to obtain and analyse journalistic material unchecked, was also restricted in October 2024. Organisations such as MI5 and MI6 were required to obtain permission from the Investigatory Powers Commissioner before obtaining confidential journalistic material obtained through 'bulk' data interception and hacking into people's devices.

I have not seen any attempt at regulation in Belgium, but a coalition of NGOs and journalists' organisations within the Centre for Democracy and Technology has declared that surveillance activities and the spyware used for them undermine democracy and European values and are illegal.

SPYING IS ALREADY A CRIME, OPPOSITION WILL BE CRIMINALISED

As seen in these examples, there is no country in the Western world where conducting activities contrary to the ‘interests’ of the state or in line with the ‘strategic interests of a foreign state or organisation’ is considered a crime of espionage. In Turkey, the MİT Law, which was amended in 2014, already authorises intelligence agencies to carry out all kinds of monitoring and surveillance, nothing more, nothing less. This clearly means that regulations in other countries are being distorted in order to silence and punish news, rights defence or academic research that the government does not like. Midas says it more clearly:

‘Oh, I remember it was mentioned as a question, why from three to seven years? Now, let me present it as follows: The others are already acts of espionage in the classical sense of espionage above, and if they are carried out, they prescribe the necessary severe penalties. What we mean here is not the acts of espionage in the classical sense, but to prevent the intelligence activities that a third country wants to carry out in my country, and let me present one more issue. These people also use Turkish citizens as an apparatus. In other words, they also use officers for a reconnaissance work, for a detection somewhere, when necessary. Here, we have expressed such a need for the penalties to be deterrent in order to ensure that Turkish citizens think twice if they intend to take part in such activities...’

Let the government set up an investigation commission, just like the Democrat Party did in 1960, and say, ‘Those who oppose the measures and decisions taken by the Investigation Committees of the Grand National Assembly of Turkey by any means whatsoever shall be punished with heavy imprisonment from one year to three years’ and be done with it. Today's bill will punish the opposition as 'spies', that is the difference.