What is the status of digital children’s rights?
In this Digital Child Rights Monitor we give insight how the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child (CRC) addressed digital child rights in its 2023 Concluding Observations on Turkey. The urgency scale reflects how strongly the CRC highlights an issue in its recommendations — the higher the score, the bigger or more pressing the problem. This scale helps visualize which digital child rights issues the CRC considers most urgent and where Turkey faces its greatest challenges. If a country gets a low urgency score it does not necessarily mean the country is doing good, it just means the CRC made little to no mention to it.
Summary
Priority
Infrastructure & Capacity stands out with the highest urgency score (13), making it Turkey’s most pressing digital child-rights concern. The CRC highlights consistent gaps in system readiness, digitalisation, and professional capacity, indicating structural issues that require immediate national attention.
Violence & Exploitation Online also appears as a high-priority concern (6), signalling persistent risks such as online abuse, exploitation, or unsafe digital environments for children.
Priority
Digital Access & Participation (5) reflects ongoing challenges in ensuring equal access, digital inclusion, and opportunities for children to meaningfully participate online.
Privacy & Data Protection (3) also receives medium urgency, suggesting that while some protections exist, important gaps remain regarding data handling, surveillance, or safeguarding children’s personal information.
Priority
Online Safety & Protection (1) is minimally addressed, implying that preventive measures, digital platform responsibilities, and reporting mechanisms receive less emphasis relative to other areas.
Digital Health & Well-Being (1) is also low urgency, showing that issues such as screen time, gaming addiction, and mental-health impacts are rarely raised in the CRC’s assessment of Turkey.
Overview themes
- Digital Access & Participation
- Digital Health & Well-Being
- Infrastructure & Capacity
- Online Safety & Protection
- Privacy & Data Protection
- Violence & Exploitation Online
The Committee’s strongest concerns focus on Infrastructure & Capacity and Violence & Exploitation Online, while areas like Online Safety & Protection and Health & Well-Being receive minimal attention.
Violence and exploitation
- Trafficking / exploitation through digital platforms
- Discriminatory Violence
- Online Harrasment and Bullying
- Online sexual exploitation / CSAM
Online sexual exploitation/CSAM and trafficking through digital platforms are the only concerns raised for Turkey in this category, each receiving a high urgency score, while discriminatory violence and online harassment are not mentioned at all.
Infrastructure and capacity
- Digitalized systems
- Cybercrime and cybersecurity laws
- Training of professionals on online offences
Cybercrime and cybersecurity laws receive the highest urgency in this category, followed closely by concerns about digitalised systems. Training of professionals on online offences is mentioned with lower urgency, indicating it is a noted but less pressing priority compared to the other two areas.
Digital health and wellbeing
The data shows that mental health impacts are the only subtheme given any urgency, with a low score of 1. No concerns were raised about gaming or online addiction, even though this is an important topic in digital wellbeing. Support and rehabilitation services were also not mentioned, indicating no identified need for improvement in this area. Overall, this theme receives very limited attention in the Concluding Observations.
Online safety and protection
The data shows a very low level of concern in the Online Safety & Protection theme, with only one urgent mention related to awareness campaigns on safe internet use. Safeguarding policies and complaint mechanisms received no urgency scores, indicating that these issues were not raised as priority areas in the assessed Concluding Observations.
Privacy and data protection
The data indicates that data protection, surveillance and profiling is the only area identified with notable urgency, receiving the highest score. All other subthemes, including Artificial Intelligence, Children’s Digital Privacy Rights, and Extraterritorial jurisdiction for online crimes, were not flagged for concern, suggesting minimal attention or no issues raised in these areas.
Digital access and participation
The data shows that E-learning is the most urgent issue within this theme, receiving the highest score compared to all other subthemes. Digital divide and IT infrastructure receive only minimal concern, while access for children with disabilities and civic participation via digital means are not mentioned at all, suggesting no identified issues in those areas.
Concluding Observations CRC
- “The Committee is concerned that platforms for online education do not sufficiently protect and respect children’s personal data and recommends that the State party develop and enforce comprehensive child data protection legislation.”
- “To criminalize explicitly all the acts under article 3 (1) (c) of the Optional Protocol, when committed online, and the acts of obtaining and procuring children for prostitution under article 3 (1) (b);…”
- “Expand children’s access to the Internet, particularly in remote and rural areas, enhance the digital literacy and skills of children, teachers and families, and protect children from information and material harmful to their well-being;…”
- “Improve expeditiously the data-collection system managed by the Turkish Statistical Institute and ensure that data collected on children’s rights cover all areas of the Convention and the Optional Protocols thereto, and are disaggregated by age, sex, disability, geographical location, ethnic and national origin, religious affiliation and socioeconomic background, in order to facilitate analysis of the situation of children, especially those in particular situations of vulnerability;…”
- “Carry out systematically at regular intervals the child profile survey to collect data on established child well-being and vulnerability indicators and ensure that such data are shared among the ministries and other relevant central and local state agencies concerned, and used for the formulation, monitoring and…”
- “Collecting and analysing data on the disparities experienced by such children and developing a strategy to confront the barriers to and measure the progress achieved in respect of improving outcomes for them;…”
- “Strengthen the collection and publication of disaggregated data on children with disabilities to inform policymaking and monitoring of policy objectives.”
Turkey
2023
Digital Child Rights Network
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