The Criminal Liability Trap In AI Regulation: Turkey's Draft vs. The EU Model

I. Introduction

AI regulation becomes most difficult when it touches criminal liability and freedom of expression. In generative systems (LLMs), users interact through prompts, outputs are not fully predictable, and the same input can produce different results depending on context and model settings. If the law treats every output as if it was directly written by the user, liability can drift from unlawful speech to the user's intent in an uncertain, probabilistic process. In practice, that risk often leads to self-censorship and over-filtering.

In our earlier article, Regulating AI Speech in Turkey: Lessons From the Grok Ban and 2025 Draft Laws, we examined the Grok episode and Turkey's late-2025 draft package. Building on that baseline, this article uses the Turkey vs EU comparison to stress-test the hard questions: how intent can be proven when prompts do not guarantee outcomes, how developer exposure fits with the principle of personal criminal liability, and