Internet Restrictions, Vpn Technology, and the Dynamics of Trust and Distrust in Türkiye

Since the early 2000s, governmental intervention into online content has significantly increased in Türkiye. Numerous online platforms, including news sites and social media, have faced access restrictions or bans due to content deemed controversial or misinformative by the government, especially during times of turmoil. Turkish IP addresses have experienced incapacitation through bandwidth throttling or outright bans imposed by internet service providers. These restrictions have been intermittent, unpredictable, and conditional on platform officials abiding by governmental demands. The resulting discussions concerning internet freedom, state censorship, and state surveillance have lead people towards digital solutions, specifically and increasingly toward VPN technology.

This study focuses on Ekşi Sözlük, a popular collaborative dictionary platform in Türkiye where users share thoughts and experiences under different topic titles. Similar to a forum and mostly oppositional in attitude, Ekşi Sözlük had its own share of governmental restrictions. For the purposes of this research, the most frequented titles about VPNs were selected and over 1500 entries were analyzed with qualitative data coding method. Preliminary results suggest that Turkish users consider VPN as a means of resisting and bypassing governmental internet restrictions, as a tool for solidarity in times of disasters and social movements, and as a must for online freedom. However, distrust in governmental curatorship of accessible online content does not imply total trust in VPNs, seeing as trust and distrust are not antonyms in the sociological sense. Users report distrust in VPN companies’ autonomy from state influence and the provision of data privacy, constantly redefining their criteria for trust and distrust in the technology. Studying the fluidity of dis/trust in VPNs in the turbulent sociopolitical context of contemporary Türkiye promises insight into the interplays between citizen and netizen, between perceptions on internet freedom and government censorship, and between the very definitions of trust and distrust themselves.