Political Economy of the Internet in Turkey : Digital Divide, Concentration and Content

This study covers the subjects of digital divide, digital inequality, concentration and content of the internet. The main goal is to reveal the market structure of the internet today, its relation with the content and user preferences in Turkey. In order to achieve this, we define the political economy of the internet and focus on two components of it, the ownership structure of the internet and the content. In contrast to the common idea, the internet is not only a virtual universe. According to this, our study endeavors how the internet globally not only reproduces inequalities of access and usage to the internet, but also imbalance between the oppressed classes, social groups, developed and undeveloped countries and carries a largely monopolistic structure today. Consequently, the study explains how the internet market is structured in Turkey and its dependency relations with foreign capital. In this regard, we illustrate the strong correlation between concentration and increasing mainstream and commercial content on the internet in Turkey.