Turkey Orders Google to Give Publishers a Say in AI Overviews Pending Antitrust Probe

Google answers readers' questions with publishers' own reporting. Turkey's competition regulator has decided that deserves a formal look, and it did not wait for the investigation to finish before stepping in.

The Turkish Competition Authority, known as Rekabet Kurumu, announced on Monday that it has opened an antitrust investigation into Google's AI Overviews and AI Mode. The target is Google as an economic unit that includes Alphabet Inc. and Google LLC. The question is whether the two features break Article 6 of Law No. 4054, the country's competition act.

The more interesting part is the interim order. On October 8, the authority's board decided to impose interim measures on Google. The announcement came almost four weeks later.

"In addition to launching an investigation, due to the strong suspicion of discriminatory and exploitative behaviors concerning news publishers, the RK decided in its meeting on Oct. 8, 2026, to apply interim measures." Turkish Competition Authority statement, as quoted by Daily Sabah

"Strong suspicion" is the threshold the board said it had reached. It is not a verdict, and the authority has not found that Google broke the law. But it is a higher bar than "we are curious," and it explains why a regulator would act before the evidence is fully tested.

The measures tell Google to set conditions that do three things, according to the authority and the coverage of it. They must not discriminate among news publishers. They must reflect the economic value of the content Google uses. And they must let publishers decide how their content is used in AI Overviews and AI Mode independently of their visibility and indexing in Google's other services. Daily Sabah and Turkiye Today both report that the measures do not ban the AI features themselves.

That last condition is the one with teeth. Publishers have long argued they face a bad trade: let Google summarize your reporting, or risk dropping out of the search results that still send you readers. The regulator is saying, in effect, that the two choices should be separate. Turkiye Today describes the intent as preventing publishers from having to choose between appearing in AI answers and keeping their place in conventional search.

Google already has a lever in this territory. Its Search Console help page says a Search generative AI control was rolled out to all websites worldwide as of August 31, 2026. Choosing to exclude a site means it gets no traffic or impressions from those features, and Google says the control is not a ranking or inclusion signal for other parts of Search. Neither the authority's statement nor the coverage I read says whether that tool satisfies the order, or whether the board considers it enough.

The probe reaches well beyond the opt-out question. The authority says its preliminary review, which began under an August 27 board decision, also examined whether Google's content agreements with publishers contain unfair terms, whether the features have an exclusionary effect on publishers and rival AI chat assistants, and whether Google treats publishers differently when picking sources or licensing content.

Turkiye Today reports that Google launched both features in Turkey in February 2026. Publisher traffic worries have not been confined to Turkey. Last week, Reddit CEO Steve Huffman told investors that AI Mode "does not drive traffic," blaming it for a drop of more than one million weekly referrals in October. Turkey is also not the only regulator turning to publisher content this month. Britain opened a probe on Friday into Meta's business terms and how they could let it use publisher sites for AI.

Google had not publicly responded in the coverage I found, and no fines have been announced.

For now, the practical question is narrower and more immediate. Does Google build a Turkish publisher choice that is truly separate from search, and does the board accept it? That answer will land long before any final ruling.