What is a hosting provider?
Under Article 2 of Law No. 5651, a hosting provider (yer sağlayıcı) is a natural or legal person that provides or operates the systems hosting services and content. Any product that lets users post reviews, comments, images, listings or files is, for that content, a hosting provider. Law No. 5651 also defines other roles:
- Content provider (içerik sağlayıcı): the person who creates or provides the content.
- Access provider (erişim sağlayıcı): the operator giving users access to the internet; it implements access-blocking orders.
- Social network provider (sosyal ağ sağlayıcı): a provider enabling users to create, view or share content for social interaction, with extra duties above one million daily accesses from Türkiye (Additional Article 4).
Duties
- No general monitoring: a hosting provider is not obliged to check the content it hosts or to investigate unlawful activity (Article 5(1)).
- Removal on notice: once notified in accordance with the Law, it must take unlawful content down (Article 5(2)). Under the warning method, a person whose rights are infringed first contacts the content provider and, if no result is obtained, the hosting provider.
- Traffic data: it must keep traffic data for between one and two years, as set by regulation (Article 5(3)).
- Official decisions: it must comply with access-blocking and removal decisions within the statutory deadlines; breaches are subject to administrative fines (Article 5(6)).
Since Law No. 7590 (2026), the competent authority under Law No. 5651 is the Cybersecurity Presidency. The EU Digital Services Act follows a similar principle (no general monitoring, liability only after knowledge) but with different procedures; we compare the two in our article on platform liability under Law No. 5651 and the DSA.
Is a company liable for a defamatory user review on its platform?
Not merely because it hosts it. Liability risk arises if the company does not act after being properly notified of clearly unlawful content, or if it adopts the content as its own. Genuine criticism should not be removed simply because it is negative (see complaint sites and online reviews).
Who should a victim write to first?
Under the warning method, the content provider first and then the hosting provider, using their published contact details. Keeping a record of each notice matters if the matter later goes to court.
Sources. Law No. 5651, Articles 2, 5 and Additional Article 4; Law No. 7590 (Official Gazette 31.7.2026, No. 33326); Regulation (EU) 2022/2065 (Digital Services Act), Articles 6 and 8.