Non-coherence theory says the boundaries of traditional fundamental rights either become broader or narrower once transposed into the digital context, and this has also been shown previously. There are two images which at first sight appear almost the opposite of one another. The first reflects almost total freedom of expression unrestrained in practice, and the second almost the total absence of such freedom due to e-technologies which have the function of transparency and perpetuating everything which has been recorded or done. The first is a feature of social media and the second of blockchain technologies. These images may seem incompatible but are additionally explainable through the proportionality deficit paradox. Proportionality as a human rights instrument becomes distorted and weakened in the digital domain. The fragmentation stems from the loss of its holistic capacity to be applied anywhere relative rights collide online. The distortion means a breakage of the link between the outcome and the proportionality principle. The concept of proportionality between online and offline human rights domains exhibits wide non-coherence.

This chapter examines the role of media and publicity in Turkey’s failed attempt at popular constitution making. The project of writing a new constitution through an inclusive, participatory, and consensus-driven process was mediated by an illiberal press in Turkey, where the AKP government routinely fortified its own media bloc and undermined critical voices. Based on a combination of newspaper content analysis and institutional history from 2011 to 2013, this chapter demonstrates how the Constitutional Conciliation Commission ‘Anayasa Uzlaşma Komisyonu, AUK’ first intended to break out of the polarized and repressed news cycles by instituting control over journalistic work. As the internal disagreements intensified and external actors became vocal about the new constitution, however, the AUK loosened its hold on the press, leading to a more polarizing narrative that reduced complex constitutional debates to simple ideological sound bites. By juxtaposing Turkey’s popular constitution-making experiment with its highly divisive, illiberal media, the chapter concludes by questioning some of the deeply held assumptions between democracy and media in contemporary theory.