The İstanbul Bar Association has said in a recent statement that Turkey’s controversial ban on the Instagram social networking platform is “unlawful” and violates the constitution, Turkish Minute reported, citing the TELE1 news website.
Instagram has been banned in Turkey since the Turkish Telecommunications Authority (BTK) blocked access to the platform on August 2, with government officials and President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan accusing the platform of censorship and failing to remove posts they deem offensive.
The bar association emphasized that decisions to block access to social media platforms create a domino effect that causes many individuals and institutions to suffer commercially. It also noted that the rights to freedom of thought and expression are protected under Articles 25 and 26 of the Turkish Constitution and Article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR).
Reminding that the Constitutional Court canceled the BTK’s authority to close down a website in late 2023, the association said: “The administrative institution’s insistence on making such a decision despite the annulment [of the authority] through the Constitutional Court decision is detrimental to the principle of the rule of law.”
It was further stated that although the BTK said the ban was due to “catalog crimes” committed by the platform, the institution failed to specify which actions of the platform constituted a crime.
The bar association said the decision to block access to Instagram was “clearly unlawful” and called on the BTK to immediately reverse it.
The statement comes as Yaman Akdeniz and Kerem Altıparmak, both professors of law and founders of the İstanbul-based Freedom of Expression Association, on Tuesday petitioned the Ankara 13th Administrative Court, requesting the cancellation of the ban on Instagram.
The academics, who are well-known users of social media platforms, said in their petition that Instagram has more than 48 million followers in Turkey and that the ongoing ban violates these people’s right to freedom of expression and right to information, guaranteed in the constitution.
Turkish officials summoned Instagram officials for a meeting on Monday, but their meeting failed to result in the removal of the ban on the platform. Turkish media reports said a disagreement between Turkish officials and Instagram representatives about what constitutes “terrorism content” is one of the reasons for the platform ban to remain in place.
This is not the first time that Turkish authorities have temporarily blocked access to social media sites, including Facebook, X and Wikipedia.
President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s government is regularly accused of muzzling freedom of expression.
As a matter of fact, Turkey, where internet freedom has steadily declined over the past decade, ranks among the “not free” countries concerning online freedoms, according to a report released by the US-based Freedom House in October.
