If you go to Turkey you might find yourself in a prison until you abruptly close this website. This is what happened to Pavel Durov (Telegram creator) in France. Telegram now complies with French law, because otherwise Pavel Durov would still be in French prison.
Bad example, especially githen the fact that Durov is a french national.
That's certainly a valid risk, if I were to put myself physically at the mercy of Turkish armed law enforcement inside their borders. In my particular case there's no public information that links my real name to the hosting company, as my work is behind the scenes.
Could Turkish intelligence link me to the company if they spent significant resources researching the hosting company that provides services to their political enemies? Probably. Do I have any personal plans to take a vacation in Turkey any time soon, or a pressing need to visit Turkey? No.
I am pretty sure we also have someone, somewhere hosting something that insults the King of Thailand, so I suppose that's a risk too.
What about countries friendly with Turkey? I can easily imagine you being arrested in half of the world and extradited to Turkey because you are being criminally prosecuted in Turkey.
It sounds like your point is that (1) you think Türkiye is unlikely to unmask any individuals associated with your company and also (2) you have little interest in ever visiting that country anyway.
In the Quad9 people’s case, defying French law and still doing operating the services under French jurisdiction might work out just fine for as long as (1) holds true, but it doesn’t take a consorted effort of research to change that. It could just be that some leaked piece of information eventually surfaces. It could be a tweet posted by someone else. And I don’t know how many people work for that organization, or might do so in the future, but it seems like a bad move to make a decision on their behalf to paint a target on all their backs.
Also, France being part of the EU makes being an enemy of the state there seem even more unwise for anyone who might want to have associations in any other EU country.
I personally would do exactly what they are doing: if French people want a government that respects free speech, they had better elect one themselves. I wouldn’t become a martyr to that cause - it wouldn’t help anyway.
This is a Swiss company offering services to French users. Although Switzerland is not an EU member, it is a party to the European Free Trade Area (EFTA) and through this, the Swiss government would likely be required to help enforce French rulings against their companies.