Youth Internet Governance Forum Turkey (Youth IGF Turkey) has been held at the shared working space of Istanbul Kadıköy Municipality, IDEA on November 26, Sunday. There were three main sessions on access, security and media, with participation of more than 30 participants.
Pneparations for the Youth IGF Turkey had started in September, with calls for topic submissions. Annual theme and main session areas have been set through submission of dozens of proposals, for the one day forum organised in leadership of Turkey-Europe Foundation, Internet Society (ISOC), and nic.tr. More than 100 applications were received from across Turkey for the forum with theme on “Impact of Access on Youth” and 30 of them have been accepted.
At the opening session, organising committee members Gurkan Özturan talked on the last three years of Youth IGF Turkey, Su Sonia Herring talked on Introduction to Internet Governance, Fatma Işkın Demirel talked on Rules & Regulations on Domain Names. Prior to the start of main sessions, Member of European Parliament, D66’s Marietta Schaake’s support message was played for the participants. Schaake in her message reiterated the significance of discussing the issues related to internet governance and youth participation in these discussions.
5 SPEAKERS IN 3 MAIN SESSIONS
During the first session, research assistant Elif Sert from Istanbul Bilgi University has given a talk on access, and also presented details of Freedom on the Net 2017 report. Ending with a note that “access is a human right” next speaker, Emre Taşgın the chairperson of Visually Impaired in Education Association (EGED) took the floor. Taşgın’s speech focused on the limitations the disabled face online and his speech has received a volume of feedback from participants. Numerous people among participants have stated that they would show efforts to develop an application for the visually impaired. EGED Chair Taşgın also screened a short film called “Undisabled Campus” at the end of his speech. Finally a call has been made by the end of the session for universal access design during web development, to enable easy-closure or total cancellation of pop-up videos that open automatically when visiting some websites -for the ease of visually impaired users- and to include verbal definition and lower texts for visual images.
In the second session on security, Dr. Enis Karaaslan has given an interactive talk on philosophy of security, multi-layer security understanding, and usability of security & proportionality. Moreover, he mentioned the necessities of having highest level of security for all devices and to hold a reasonable level of risk analysis at all times, and not to prevent ease of use.
The final session on media welcomed two journalists; Serhay Ayan of TKNLJ and Gokhan Biçici of dokuz8NEWS. Topics on development of digital journalism and the rise of citizen journalism have been discussed with references to early 1990s and 2000s. Moreover, foresight on media practices in digital platforms, indulging in thematic fields and personalised media fields have been reiterated.
Net neutrality was also discussed during media session and the significance of right to access information and to approach news through a creative and up-to-date technology have been highlighted.
11 cities have been represented at Youth IGF Turkey 2017