Turkey intensified internet censorship in 2025, blocking more than 232,000 websites and domain names in a single year, as the total number of blocked domains since 2018 reached 1.5 million, according to a new report by the Freedom of Expression Association (İFÖD).
The report, titled “Digital Martial Law: Silencing the Public in the Name of Public Order,” said the Interior Ministry examined 257,481 social media accounts during the year, a 30 percent increase from 2024, as authorities increasingly treated online expression as a security matter.
According to the report, 2025 marked a year in which “reporting the truth was effectively criminalized,” with access bans and bandwidth throttling no longer functioning as exceptional measures but instead becoming routine tools deployed during periods of social and political tension.
Authorities continued to target major online platforms such as Instagram, Wattpad, Roblox and Discord, extending periods of restricted access in 2025.
Internet throttling was used for political control, including for 42 hours following the detention of İstanbul Mayor Ekrem İmamoğlu in March 2025 and for 21 hours during the police blockade of the main opposition Republican People’s Party’s (CHP) İstanbul provincial headquarters on September 7, 2025.
İmamoğlu, widely seen as President Erdoğan’s strongest political rival, was arrested in March 2025 on corruption charges that critics say are politically motivated and intended to sideline him ahead of the 2028 general election.
Authorities also intensified efforts to prevent users from bypassing restrictions through VPNs, blocking 454 server addresses linked to 26 VPN services.
According to the report Article 8/A of Turkey’s internet law, which allows online restrictions on grounds of national security and public order, continued to be widely used to remove news reports and social media content without transparent oversight.
The number of decisions issued under the provision jumped from 71 in 2024 to 179 in 2025, while the number of specifically targeted internet addresses rose from 828 to 6,300.
The report also documented what it described as a judicial crisis stemming from local courts’ failure to implement rulings of Turkey’s Constitutional Court (AYM). More than half of the violations identified in a landmark AYM judgement, which called on parliament to make necessary legal changes to remedy a systematic violation were not implemented by lower courts.
Courts in İstanbul’s Çağlayan judicial district recorded a 99 percent noncompliance rate with Constitutional Court rulings, the report found. Noncompliance was even higher in cases stemming from blocking requests filed by high-ranking political figures, including President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.
The report also pointed to what it described as “a new era” of state control over independent digital journalism, saying Turkey’s broadcasting and streaming regulator, the Radio and Television Supreme Council (RTÜK), warned seven major YouTube channels, including those of Cumhuriyet TV, Fatih Altaylı and Birgün TV.
The report further warned that a legal amendment scheduled to take effect in November 2026 would require social media users to verify their identities through the government’s e-Government portal (e-Devlet), which it said could effectively end online anonymity and create a “massive chilling effect” on political speech.
The US-based democracy watchdog Freedom House’s “2025 Freedom on the Net” report placed Turkey among the five countries with the steepest long-term declines in internet freedom. The organization cited broad censorship practices and intensified digital controls over the past 15 years, giving Turkey a score of 31 out of 100, putting it in the bottom tier of the 72 countries assessed.
