Türkiye blocks Instagram

Officials have accused the platform of preventing users from posting condolences over the death of Hamas chief Ismail Haniyeh

Turkish authorities have blocked Instagram after officials in Ankara accused the platform of “censorship” in the ongoing Middle East conflict.

According to Türkiye’s Information and Communication Technologies Authority (BTK), access to the social media platform was blocked on Friday. No formal reason was given for the move, nor any indication of how long the ban would last.

Fahrettin Altun, the country’s communications chief, had slammed the Meta-owned network earlier this week for its response to the killing of Ismail Haniyeh, the Hamas political leader. Haniyeh was killed in a bombing in Tehran on Wednesday, with Hamas and Iran accusing Israel of orchestrating the attack. West Jerusalem has neither denied nor confirmed involvement, but has repeatedly vowed to destroy Islamist “terrorists” who threaten the Jewish state.

Altun “strongly condemned” Instagram, claiming it had “prevented people from posting condolences on Haniyeh’s martyrdom without giving any reason.”

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“This is a very clear and obvious attempt at censorship,” he argued, vowing that Ankara “will continue to defend freedom of expression against these platforms, which have repeatedly shown that they serve the global system of exploitation and injustice.” 

As of February 2024, the number of Instagram users in Türkiye – a country with a population of 83 million – totaled around 58 million, according to Statista. One person can create multiple accounts on the platform.

Türkiye has temporarily banned various social networks several times in the past. In 2014, the country’s authorities blocked Twitter and YouTube for two weeks and two months respectively, after leaked videos purporting to show corruption at the highest levels of government went viral.

Wikipedia was also blocked by Türkiye in 2017 and 2020, over an article that described the country as a state sponsor of several terrorist groups. In 2019, the country’s Constitutional Court ruled that the move violated human rights and ordered the ban to be lifted.