Turkey has followed dozens of other countries around the world in passing legislation to restrict minors’ access to social media.
Turkey passed a bill on April 22 to prevent minors under 15 from accessing social media, becoming the latest country to enact such laws since Australia became the first to put age restrictions on the platforms in December 2025.
Under the rules, children under 15 will not be able to register for or access accounts on the platforms, with tech companies expected to introduce effective age-restriction systems, according to state-run news outlet Anadolu Agency (AA).
According to a statement from the Grand Assembly of the Turkish Parliament, social media platforms will need to provide separate services for children aged 15 from those who are older.
They also must provide “clear, understandable, and user-friendly parental control tools,” it said.
“These parental control tools will include mechanisms for controlling account settings, making fee-based transactions such as purchases, rentals, and paid memberships subject to parental permission or approval, and monitoring and limiting usage time,” the statement reads, according to a translation.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan must pass the bill within 15 days for it to become law.
The passage of the bill comes one week after a 14-year-old boy fatally shot nine students and a teacher at a middle school in Kahramanmaras, southern Turkey.
Police are investigating the online activity of the shooter, who also died, in an attempt to uncover the motivation for the attack.
Speaking in the wake of the shootings, Erdogan called for mitigating the online risks to children’s safety and privacy.
“We are living in a period where some digital sharing applications are corrupting our children’s minds and social media platforms have, to put it bluntly, become cesspools,” the president said in a televised address on April 20.
Opposition to Bill
The Republican People’s Party, or CHP—Turkey’s main opposition party—has criticized the bill, saying children should be protected “not with bans but with rights-based policies.”
In recent years, the Turkish government has sought to restrict social media platforms as they have grown as a means of expressing dissent.
