Social media platform X blocked access to 126 accounts following the February 5 ruling of an Ankara judge that cited the need for “protection of national security and public order,” Turkish Minute reported.
X, formerly known as Twitter, complied with the Ankara 4th Criminal Judgeship of Peace’s order on a request from the Turkish police communicated via the Turkish Telecommunications Authority (BTK), İFÖD said.
On Thursday Turkish authorities announced the blocking of 42 accounts belonging to Turkish journalists, activists and media organizations operated by journalists living in exile as part of a “digital fight” against the faith-based Gülen movement on the grounds that they spread propaganda and disinformation.
The Gülen movement, inspired by the teachings of Turkish-Islamic scholar Fethullah Gülen, who passed away in Pennsylvania last October, is labeled a terrorist organization by the Turkish government. The government accuses the movement of orchestrating a failed coup in July 2016, a claim the movement strongly denies.
Among those blocked accounts are those belonging to exiled journalists Aydoğan Vatandaş Turhan Bozkurt, Abdullah Bozkurt, Emre Uslu, Ergun Babahan, Basri Doğan and Erkam Tufan Aytav in addition to the accounts of Bold News, a website established by a group of exiled journalists, and the English-language news website Politurco, which reports on Turkey.
Other journalists and media platforms not included in the 42 listed by the government said they were affected by the access ban.
For example, the X account of the Artı Gerçek news website has been blocked in Turkey, according to the website itself. Artı Gerçek covers mostly issues about the Kurds in Turkey, the rights violations they suffer and prosecutions against them.
On Saturday journalist Metin Cihan, who became a target of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s government after he published reports using official data revealing continued trade between Turkey and Israel despite Ankara’s public stance against Israel’s military actions in Gaza, announced that his account was also blocked.
Following these announcements, İFÖD clarified on Monday that the total number of accounts is 126 in addition to 14 posts on X.
Among the blocked accounts are some that have been inactive since 2015 and were previously subject to court-ordered restrictions between 2016 and 2017, though Twitter did not remove or hide these accounts at the time, İFÖD said.
X, which has a poor track record of complying with the Turkish government’s censorship demands, also blocked access to over 100 accounts belonging to Turkish journalists, activists and media organizations run by journalists living in exile last October.
The access ban came shortly after the death of Gülen, following which some people, including two journalists, were detained in Turkey for offering messages of condolence for him on social media or on TV.
A number of the blocked accounts posted condolences for Gülen or praise of his movement following the cleric’s death, but others did not.
X appointed a representative to Turkey in line with a controversial social media law after the company and others were hit with advertising bans for failing to comply with the law.
The law — which human rights and media freedom groups said amounted to censorship — compels social media companies with more than 1 million users to maintain representatives in Turkey to deal with complaints about content on their platforms.
In the run-up-to the general election in May 2023, X complied with a request from the Turkish government to censor four accounts and 409 tweets that were critical of President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and his leadership. These added to the hundreds of accounts that X had already censored at the request of the Turkish government in the past, with Twitter even being banned in the country in 2014 for refusing to comply with Erdoğan’s take-down orders.
Poor record in online freedoms
The rampant online censorship in Turkey has made its way into the reports of international organizations as well.
According to a report from the Washington-based Freedom House in October, Turkey, where authorities frequently censor online content and harass individuals for their social media posts, has been ranked the lowest-scoring country in Europe for online freedoms,
Turkey has a score of 31 in a 100-point index, with scores based on a scale of 0 (least free) to 100 (most free). The other two lowest-scoring countries in Europe are Hungary with a score of 69 and Serbia with 70, according to the “Freedom on the Net 2024” report.
Turkish authorities have temporarily blocked access to social media sites, including Facebook, X, Wikipedia and most recently Instagram, which remained blocked for nine days in August and drew international condemnation.
President Erdoğan’s government is regularly accused of muzzling freedom of expression and cracking down on people who express criticism of his government on social media.
Thousands of people face investigation, are prosecuted and sentenced to prison in Turkey for expressing views disliked by the government on social media platforms.
Rights groups routinely accuse Turkey of undermining media freedom by arresting journalists and shutting down critical media outlets, especially since Erdoğan survived the failed coup in July 2016.
