Turkish authorities ordered access blocked to at least 150 X accounts on Monday, including those of journalists and a news outlet, extending a series of restrictions on people covering financial markets, court cases and civil rights.
The Freedom of Expression Association (İFÖD), a Turkish group that tracks internet censorship through its EngelliWeb project, raised its count from an earlier figure of 55 as it identified more affected accounts. Among them are Meral Danyıldız and Sarya Toprak, reporters for BirGün daily. The list also includes Bizim TV, a news outlet, Esra Tokat, who covers courts for ANKA news agency, and lawyers Sena Yazıbağlı and Tuncay Koç.
EngelliWeb said many of the accounts had posted about three subjects: Turkey’s investment fund crisis, the murder of a child named Narin Güran and the Furkan movement. In the fund crisis, Turkey’s market regulator ordered 131 investment funds liquidated after some managers struggled to meet investors’ requests to withdraw their money. Güran was eight when she disappeared in southeastern Turkey in 2024 and was later found dead, in a case that prompted protests and scrutiny of the investigation. The Furkan movement is a Turkish religious group led by jailed preacher Alparslan Kuytul, who has criticized the government. The restrictions were justified on national security and public order grounds, according to Sendika.org, and EngelliWeb said X had already made some of the accounts invisible to users in Turkey.
Toprak wrote that she had not received formal notice of the order against her account. She suspected her posts in support of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender rights were the reason, although officials had not publicly tied the decision to those posts. Tokat announced a second account after learning that access to her original one had been blocked.
The latest orders came two days after at least 80 other accounts were targeted, including those of Kısa Dalga news website and journalist Hilmi Hacaloğlu. EngelliWeb said X had already hidden most accounts in that batch from users in Turkey. The group also identified 194 accounts targeted last week during investigations into online commentary about financial markets. Prosecutors accused users in that case of making posts that could frighten investors, and the orders relied on a provision of Turkey’s internet law covering national security and public order.
In a separate operation on September 17, the İstanbul Chief Public Prosecutor’s Office announced restrictions on 419 social media accounts. Prosecutors linked that operation to alleged obscene content and the protection of children, although accounts belonging to journalists, women’s organizations and rights groups were also affected. Under X’s country-specific restriction system, an account can stay online elsewhere while disappearing for users in Turkey, cutting affected reporters off from much of their home audience.
This article is republished from Turkish Minute.
