Türkiye blocks access to Instagram

The move comes after Fahrettin Altun, chairman of the Turkish presidential communications directorate, criticised the platform on Wednesday for its decision to block messages of condolence over the killing of Ismail Haniyeh, a top leader of the Palestinian Hamas militia.

“This is pure censorship,” Altun said on X, adding that Instagram had not cited any policy violations for its action.

However, BTK denied having acted in connection with the death of the Palestinian leader: “We have not blocked access for this reason, it has nothing to do with it,” said one of its officials, speaking anonymously on the specialist website Medyascope.

Instagram’s parent company, Meta, had no immediate comment on either the ban or Altun’s comments.

Turkish authorities have repeatedly resorted to temporarily blocking social networks such as Facebook and X (formerly Twitter), usually after attacks.

Between April 2017 and January 2020, authorities also blocked the online participatory encyclopedia Wikipedia for two articles establishing links between Ankara and extremist organisations.

Turkey is not the first country to impose restrictions on the social network. According to Statista, from 2015 to 2022, at least 71 countries around the world have restricted or blocked a social network temporarily or permanently.

In the case of Instagram, for example, it has been blocked in China for over a decade along with Facebook, X, YouTube and WhatsApp. Another country that restricted access is Iran; however, in 2023 Meta pointed out that despite the measures, tens of millions of people use that social network in the country.

Restrictions can occur for many reasons, but security-related restrictions related to governments stand out.

With information from Reuters and AFP.