Gambling tops BTK's access ban decisions: Complaints are snowballing
The 2025 activity report of the Information and Communication Technologies Authority (BTK) has revealed the digital blockade against catalog crimes on the internet and the rising number of subscriber complaints. While the crime of "providing a place and opportunity for gambling" accounted for 61.51% of the access ban decisions taken by the authority, user complaints against service providers also showed an increase of 43.74% compared to the previous year.
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The Information and Communication Technologies Authority (BTK) has published its activity report for 2025. According to the data in the report, gambling and obscenity shared the top two spots in access blocking measures applied against catalog crimes committed in the internet environment. Child sexual abuse, prostitution, obscenity, illegal betting, and gambling accounted for 99.88% of the blocking decisions taken by BTK against criminal elements in the digital world. In this context, the crime of providing a place and opportunity for gambling became the number one reason for access bans by a wide margin, with a rate of 61.51%. Gambling was followed by obscenity at 25.43% and prostitution at 11.35%. Among other internet crimes, illegal betting accounted for 0.94%, child sexual abuse for 0.65%, drugs for 0.07%, and the supply of substances dangerous to health for 0.03%, while crimes against Atatürk and suicide inducement cases were at the bottom of the list with rates of 0.01%.
USER COMPLAINTS INCREASED BY 43 PERCENT IN ONE YEAR
The BTK report revealed not only access bans but also the rapid escalation in problems citizens experience with digital and logistics service providers. The total number of complaints received by the authority in 2025 increased by 43.74% compared to the previous year, reaching 279 thousand 276. While internet service providers were the area where subscribers reported the most problems with a total of 125 thousand 243 complaints, GSM operators followed in second place by a narrow margin with 120 thousand 705 complaints. These two major sectors were followed by satellite platforms with 13 thousand 522 complaints, fixed telephone services with 10 thousand 887 complaints, and the postal cargo sector with 8 thousand 919 complaints.
At the top of the issues where citizens reported the most grievances were commitments, penalty clauses, and cancellation fees in the GSM sector. Connection problems and service quality in internet service providers, billing errors in satellite platforms, subscription procedures in fixed telephony, and branch and personnel performance in the cargo sector were recorded as the most complained-about topics.