Yes, it is mandatory. But not from a single source: for an internet news site two separate laws make two separate lists compulsory. Article 3 of Internet Law No. 5651 requires "identifying information" and imposes that duty on content, hosting and access providers alike. Article 4 of Press Law No. 5187 has since 2022 imposed an imprint list specific to internet news sites. The two lists overlap but are not the same; a site that does not satisfy both can be compliant with one and fined under the other.
Source 1: Article 3 of Law No. 5651 — the information obligation
The verbatim text of the article is as follows (unofficial translation): "ARTICLE 3- (1) Content, hosting and access providers are obliged to keep their identifying information available, in an up-to-date form and in a manner accessible to users, in the internet environment belonging to them, within the principles and procedures determined by regulation. (2) An administrative fine of from two thousand Turkish liras up to fifty thousand Turkish liras shall be imposed by the President upon a content, hosting or access provider that fails to fulfil the obligation set out in the preceding paragraph."
Three points deserve attention. First, the obligation contains the words "in an up-to-date form" — writing it once and forgetting it is not enough; when the address or telephone number changes, the information must change too. Second, the content of the list is determined not in the Law but in the regulation. Third, the range of the fine in Article 3(2) was raised from the level of "two thousand – ten thousand" to its present level by Article 126 of Law No. 6552; the fine is imposed by the President of BTK.
The remaining paragraphs of the article also concern the operator. Under Article 3(3) (Added: 6/2/2014-6518/Art. 86), those who carry out activities within the scope of this Law from inside or outside Turkey may be served with "notification by electronic mail or other means of communication, on the basis of information obtained from the means of communication on their internet pages, the domain name, the IP address and similar sources". Article 3(4) was annulled by the judgment of the Constitutional Court dated 2/10/2014, E.2014/149, K.2014/151.
The list to which Law No. 5651 refers: Article 5 of Regulation No. 11746
The instrument to which Article 3 of the Law refers is the Regulation on the Procedures and Principles Governing the Regulation of Publications Made on the Internet, dated 30/11/2007 and numbered 11746. Article 5 reads verbatim as follows:
"Information obligation — ARTICLE 5 – (1) Content providers, hosting providers and access providers with a commercial or economic purpose are obliged to keep the identifying information set out below available in the internet environment belonging to them, in a manner directly accessible by users from the home page and under a contact heading, accurately, completely and in an up-to-date form: a) where a natural person, name and surname; where a legal person, its title and the persons responsible, its tax identification number or trade registry number, b) place of residence; where a legal person, the place where its head office is situated, c) electronic contact address and telephone number, ç) where the service offered is provided within the framework of an activity subject to the permission or supervision of an authority, information relating to the competent supervisory authority. (2) A content provider with a commercial or economic purpose is obliged to keep, together with the information in the first paragraph, the identifying information relating to the hosting provider on its home page, accurately, completely and in an up-to-date form." (unofficial translation)
Three concrete obligations follow from this article: the information must be directly accessible from the home page, must be gathered under a "contact" heading, and the identifying information of your hosting provider (your hosting company) must also appear on the home page. The last of these is the one most often skipped: writing your own details while omitting the name and address of your hosting provider breaches Article 5(2).
A warning you need about this regulation
This has two practical consequences. First, do not rely on the fine figures in the regulation: Article 9(1) still says "from two thousand New Turkish Liras up to ten thousand New Turkish Liras", whereas the range that governs is the TRY 2,000 – 50,000 in Article 3(2) of the Law. Second, some of the periods in the regulation also conflict with the Law: while Article 7(1)(c) speaks of retaining hosting provider traffic data for "six months", Article 5(3) of the Law, as amended in 2014 by Law No. 6518, says not less than one year and not more than two years. Where there is a conflict, the provision of the Law governs.
Source 2: Article 4 of Law No. 5187 — the internet news site imprint
Article 4 of Press Law No. 5187 is headed "Compulsory information". Article 3 of Law No. 7418 of 13/10/2022 added two new paragraphs to the article specific to internet news sites. Their verbatim texts are as follows (unofficial translations):
"(Added paragraph: 13/10/2022-7418/Art. 3) On internet news sites there shall in addition be kept, in the internet environment belonging to them, in a manner directly accessible by users from the home page and under a contact heading, the address of the workplace from which the activity is carried on, the trade title, the electronic mail address, the contact telephone number and the electronic service address, together with the name and address of the hosting provider."
"(Added paragraph: 13/10/2022-7418/Art. 3) On internet news sites the date on which a content item was first made available and the dates of subsequent updates shall be stated on the content itself, in such a way that they do not change on each access."
The second paragraph does not look like an imprint provision, but it is technically the hardest obligation to satisfy. The words "in such a way that they do not change on each access" require the date to be fixed and visible on the page: your content management system must hold the first publication date and each update date separately, and must display both on the story page. Systems whose template shows only "today", or shows the date in relative form ("2 hours ago"), do not satisfy this paragraph.
The sanction: Article 15 of Law No. 5187
The article is headed "Failure to display compulsory information" and opens verbatim as follows (unofficial translation): "Article 15- Where the matters required to be displayed under Article 4 in printed works and on internet news sites are not displayed or are displayed contrary to the truth, the responsible editor and the authorised person to whom the responsible editor reports, in the case of periodicals, and the publisher, in the case of non-periodical publications, and the printer who does not display or wrongly displays its name and address, shall be punished with a heavy fine of from five hundred million liras up to twenty billion liras. This fine may not be less than two billion liras for regional periodicals and five billion liras for nationwide periodicals."
Note also who bears the penalty: Article 15 targets, in the case of periodicals, the responsible editor and the authorised person to whom the responsible editor reports. A defect in the imprint is therefore not a corporate infraction but a sanction directed at an individual. For the conditions applying to the responsible editor, see Article 5 of Law No. 5187 and our guide to the periodical publication declaration.
The two sources compared
| Test | Law No. 5651, Art. 3 + Regulation 11746, Art. 5 | Law No. 5187, Art. 4 (paragraphs added by Law No. 7418) |
|---|---|---|
| Whom it binds | Content, hosting and access providers with a commercial or economic purpose | Internet news sites (those falling within the definition in Art. 2(1)(m) of Law No. 5187) |
| Where it must sit | Directly accessible from the home page, under a "contact" heading | Directly accessible from the home page, under a "contact" heading |
| Identity information | Name and surname for a natural person; title and <b>the persons responsible</b> for a legal person | <b>Trade title</b> |
| Tax / registry | <b>Tax identification number or trade registry number</b> | Not provided for |
| Address | Place of residence / place where the head office is situated | <b>Address of the workplace from which the activity is carried on</b> |
| Contact | Electronic contact address and telephone number | Electronic mail address and contact telephone number |
| Electronic service address | Not provided for | <b>Mandatory</b> |
| Supervisory authority information | <b>Mandatory</b> where the activity is subject to permission or supervision | Not provided for |
| Hosting provider information | <b>Identifying information</b> relating to the hosting provider, on the home page | <b>Name and address</b> of the hosting provider |
| Content dates | Not provided for | <b>First publication date + update dates</b>, on the content itself |
| Sanction | Administrative fine of TRY 2,000 - 50,000, President of BTK (Art. 3(2)) | Judicial fine, on the responsible editor and the authorised person to whom that editor reports (Art. 15) |
The logic of the table is this: the two lists do not replace one another, they combine. The tax identification number is required only on the Law No. 5651 side, the electronic service address only on the Law No. 5187 side; if you write neither, you are in default under both laws. What they have in common is the placement: both require the information to be directly accessible from the home page and gathered under a "contact" heading — scattering it across separate pages, or giving it only in small type in the footer, is a risky choice.
Combined checklist
The list below is the sum of the two sources. A ready-made text template for the imprint and a detailed explanation of the Law No. 5187 side can be found in our internet news site imprint template; the list here does not repeat that, but completes it by adding the Law No. 5651 side. To fill in these details and generate a copyable imprint block, you can use the imprint generator.
COMBINED IMPRINT AND CONTACT INFORMATION CHECKLIST
PLACEMENT (both laws)
[ ] Information DIRECTLY ACCESSIBLE FROM THE HOME PAGE
[ ] Gathered under a "Contact" heading
[ ] On a single page, not split up, up to date
ITEMS UNDER LAW No. 5651 ART. 3 + REGULATION 11746 ART. 5
[ ] Where a natural person: name and surname
[ ] Where a legal person: title AND THE PERSONS RESPONSIBLE
[ ] Tax identification number OR trade registry number
[ ] Place of residence / for a legal person, where the head office
is situated
[ ] Electronic contact address
[ ] Telephone number
[ ] Where the activity is subject to the permission/supervision of
an authority: information on the competent supervisory authority
[ ] Identifying information on the HOSTING PROVIDER — ON THE
HOME PAGE
ITEMS UNDER LAW No. 5187 ART. 4 (paragraphs added by Law No. 7418)
[ ] ADDRESS OF THE WORKPLACE from which the activity is carried on
[ ] TRADE TITLE
[ ] Electronic mail address
[ ] Contact telephone number
[ ] ELECTRONIC SERVICE ADDRESS
[ ] NAME AND ADDRESS of the hosting provider
LAW No. 5187 ART. 4 — CONTENT DATES (technical)
[ ] First publication date visible on the content itself
[ ] Each update date separately visible
[ ] Dates DO NOT CHANGE on each access (fixed, not relative)
[ ] No relative expression such as "2 hours ago" standing alone in
the template
OPERATION
[ ] A person regularly reads the e-mail inbox given in the imprint
[ ] The registered/electronic service address is active and
monitored
[ ] The imprint is updated within 1 day of any change of address,
telephone or title (Art. 3: "in an up-to-date form")
[ ] The imprint changes when the hosting provider changes
[ ] A dated screenshot of the imprint is archivedFour common mistakes
- Not stating the hosting provider information. Both Article 5(2) of the regulation and Article 4 of Law No. 5187 require it; a site that does not update its imprint when it changes hosting company is automatically in default.
- Omitting the tax identification number or trade registry number. Because it is not required on the Law No. 5187 side it is missing from most imprints, but Article 5(1)(a) of the regulation expressly calls for it.
- Not stating the electronic service address. It is overlooked because it is not provided for on the Law No. 5651 side; under Article 4 of Law No. 5187 it is mandatory.
- Displaying content dates in relative form. The expression "3 hours ago" changes on every access; the final paragraph of Article 4 of Law No. 5187 expressly excludes that.
To understand which capacity these obligations arise from, see our article on whether a news website is a hosting provider or a content provider, and for the compliance process as a whole see our legal compliance checklist for internet news sites.
Making the imprint directly accessible from the home page, displaying dates in fixed form and updating the hosting provider information automatically are all jobs to be solved at template level. The KEYDAL news publishing software ships with imprint fields and first-publication / update date display ready to go; and when you take your hosting from our hosting service, the hosting provider imprint details are supplied as standard.