Turkey’s interior minister said on Wednesday 27,304 social media accounts had been blocked in the first four months of 2025 as part of the country’s expanding digital crackdown, Turkish Minute reported.
Interior Minister Ali Yerlikaya made the remarks at a government-hosted workshop in Ankara focused on “synthetic media and disinformation,” during which he defended the government’s policies as necessary for national security and public order.
Yerlikaya said that from January to April 2025, authorities blocked access to 6,765 URLs and 27,304 social media accounts.
He did not specify how many of the blocked accounts were tied to political activity, but human rights monitors and digital censorship watchdogs say hundreds of journalists, activists and opposition voices have been targeted under similar policies in recent months.
Since Yerlikaya became interior minister in June 2023, a total of 237,753 “criminal content” accounts were identified, he said, including 21,214 URLs and 112,854 social media accounts that were subsequently blocked.
The statement comes amid growing alarm over what critics describe as a sweeping effort by Turkish authorities to suppress dissent through vague national security laws and fast-track court orders.
Speaking at the event organized by the Directorate of Communications, Yerlikaya framed the government’s digital enforcement as a public safety measure, citing foreign studies showing the rapid spread of false information online.
He referenced a 2023 Science article claiming that fake news spreads six times faster than verified news on social media, and a Stanford study suggesting that nearly 70 percent of participants struggle to distinguish deepfake videos from authentic ones.
Yerlikaya argued that these findings represent not just a technical problem but a broader crisis of public trust and security.
Turkey’s cybercrime units within the national police and gendarmerie operate round the clock, he said, to detect and neutralize online content deemed harmful to public order or national morale.
He stressed that digital complaints from the public are handled promptly and that content aimed at inciting unrest or spreading synthetic misinformation is taken down without delay.
Yerlikaya also accused global platforms of selectively censoring content related to conflicts in Muslim-majority regions, including Israel’s ongoing military campaign in Gaza.
He said posts supporting Palestine have been removed or down-ranked on platforms like Instagram, YouTube and TikTok under the pretense of violating content guidelines.
He said this amounted to the “algorithmic imprisonment” of Palestinian voices and their supporters, echoing criticism from Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch that pro-Palestinian content is often disproportionately flagged or removed.
He cited previous examples of similar moderation policies during the Rohingya crisis in Myanmar, accusing social media platforms of contributing to the suppression of humanitarian narratives.
Yerlikaya warned that synthetic media has become a tool for global information control by what he described as hegemonic actors in the technology sector.
He said new digital threats — including scams, illegal gambling, child exploitation and online bullying — have evolved into transnational criminal challenges that governments must confront with urgency.
He pledged to apply the same level of determination to fighting cybercrime as the government claims to apply in its fight against terrorism and drugs.
The Turkish government has long framed online censorship as part of its broader counterterrorism and public order agenda.
However, critics argue that the vague definitions used under laws such as Turkey’s Law No. 5651 allow for arbitrary bans on content that is simply critical of the government or its policies.
In recent months court orders have led to the blocking of hundreds of opposition-affiliated accounts, including exiled journalists, independent news outlets and even the official account of İstanbul Mayor Ekrem İmamoğlu, President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s main political rival.
International press freedom groups and watchdogs such as the Freedom of Expression Association (İFÖD) and EngelliWeb have documented a sharp rise in government takedown orders, especially since the arrest of İmamoğlu in March.
Many of these accounts were not only blocked in Turkey but also experienced a significant drop in global engagement due to platform-level downgrading of visibility, according to affected users and digital rights advocates.
The government does not disclose the specific criteria used to determine which accounts are labeled criminal or which content is deemed disinformation.
Turkish courts rarely reverse blocking decisions, and appeals can take months — or years — to resolve.
Meanwhile, platforms that refuse to comply with Turkish orders face throttling or advertising bans under recent amendments to media and digital laws.
The trend of platform compliance has accelerated since Elon Musk’s takeover of Twitter, now X, which has repeatedly withheld the accounts of journalists in exile and opposition media at the request of Turkish courts.
Turkey’s increasing use of digital censorship has been cited by press freedom monitors as a key factor in the country’s low ranking in global media freedom indices.
