Constitutional Court ruling takes effect: TFF's authority becomes a thing of the past

The regulation granting the Turkish Football Federation (TFF) the authority to implement access blocks on football broadcasts in the internet environment has officially ended with the Constitutional Court's annulment ruling coming into effect.

Following the decision, which took effect as of July 14, the TFF will no longer be able to issue direct access blocking orders within this scope. The authority in question had been granted to the federation on December 21, 2021, through the "protection of broadcasting rights" regulation added to the Law on the Turkish Football Federation No. 5894.

Under the regulation, the TFF management or individuals authorized by the federation were able to decide to block access to content containing illegal football match broadcasts. In cases where access to the content could not be technically blocked, an access block could be applied to the entire website.

In its ruling dated June 17, 2025, the Constitutional Court had ruled that the regulation was contrary to constitutional guarantees regarding freedom of expression and the limitation of fundamental rights and freedoms. The court had decided that the annulment ruling would take effect nine months after its publication in the Official Gazette.

According to data from the Freedom of Expression Association, the TFF ensured that access blocks were applied to 122 thousand 638 domain names and 55 thousand 512 IP addresses between 2022 and 2025. Current data from the EngelliWeb Project indicates that the number of blocked domain names exceeded 130 thousand and the number of IP addresses exceeded 58 thousand in the 2022-2026 period.

It was reported that more than 13 thousand additional domain names were blocked during the nine-month period while the annulment ruling was awaiting implementation.