After Turkey banned access to Instagram on Friday, numerous Turkish users of the social media network expressed their frustration on the well-known platform X, complaining about their inability to update their feeds.
The national communications authority did not provide an explanation, but a senior Turkish official accused the American company of engaging in censorship. The BTK communications regulator announced on its website that “instagram.com has been blocked by a decision on the date of 02/08/2024,” without offering further details.
Fahrettin Altun, the director of communications for the Turkish presidency, accused Instagram, owned by Meta, of “impeding people from publishing messages of condolence for the martyr Haniyeh” on Wednesday. Ismail Haniyeh, the political leader of Hamas and a close ally of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, was assassinated in Tehran on Wednesday in an incident attributed to Israel.
Altun stated on X, “This is a very clear and obvious attempt at censure.”
According to Turkish media, more than 50 million of Turkey’s 85 million residents have Instagram accounts. The decision sparked ridicule on other social media platforms like X. A meme with the hashtag “X when Turks wake up to find that Instagram is blocked” depicted a crowded metro station and went viral on the platform.
One Instagram user posted a picture of a crying man with the caption, “Life is over, and Instagram is blocked in Turkey.”
Turkish authorities have previously restricted access to social media websites. Wikipedia was banned between April 2017 and January 2020 due to entries allegedly linking the president to extremists. This move was shocking in a country where Erdogan’s government is often accused of violating civil liberties due to the large volume of web content rendered unavailable.
In April, Facebook’s parent company Meta decided to halt its Threads social network in Turkey after Turkish authorities stopped it from sharing data with Instagram.
