Instagram has been banned in Türkiye since early Friday morning, as the country’s Information and Communication Technologies Authority (BTK) blocked access to the social media platform without providing a reason or any indication of the ban’s possible duration.
Despite the lack of an official reason from BTK, the Turkish presidency’s communications director, Fahrettin Altun, had previously criticised the platform for deleting condolence posts related to the death of Hamas political bureau chief and lead peace negotiator Ismail Haniyeh, who was assassinated in Tehran, Iran, on Wednesday.
“I also strongly condemn the social media platform Instagram which is actively preventing people from posting messages of condolences for the passing of Hamas leader Haniyeh without citing any policy violations. This is censorship, pure and simple”, Altun wrote on X Wednesday evening. We will defend freedom of speech against these platforms that have showed many times that they are primarily in the service of global exploitative system of injustice. We will stand with our Palestinian brothers and sisters in every opportunity and in every platform.”
Commenting on the ban, the country’s transportation and infrastructure minister, Abdulkadir Uraloglu, said “they don’t abide by laws and our regulations and don’t take our societal sensitivities into consideration”, adding that the ban will be lifted when “they fulfil the requirements”, without specifying exactly which regulations the platform was breaching.
“We will do what is needed to establish a social media that respects our values, is free of disinformation, and is cleaner and more secure”, Uraloglu’s deputy, Omer Fatih Sayan, followed up on X.
Not all officials agree with the ban however. Highlighting the use of the platform for more than social interactions, but also “commerce and communicating”, Istanbul mayor Ekrem Imamoglu, who is a member of Türkiye’s main opposition party, said Instagram was “arbitrarily shut down” and called the block unacceptable.
Türkiye is one of the few countries that does not consider Hamas a terrorist organisation. Calling the group the “liberation fighters”, a day of mourning was observed for Haniyeh on Friday, with flags flown at half-mast.
This is not the first time Türkiye blocks access to platforms. YouTube was banned from 2007 to 2010, while hundreds of thousands of other websites have been inaccessible in the country since 2022, according to the Freedom of Expression Association, a non-profit organization that aims to protect the right to freedom of opinion and expression in Türkiye.
