Turkish courts blocked access to 3,330 URLs linked to 1,306 pieces of online content in the first seven months of 2025, according to a new report by FreeWebTurkey, a censorship monitoring project run by the Media and Law Studies Association.
The group said it reviewed 105 access-ban decisions issued by 70 courts, based on publicly available rulings and court documents.
The blocked material included news articles, social media posts and entire user accounts. The watchdog said restrictions disproportionately affected independent and opposition-leaning outlets, with Kurdish-focused media among the most frequently targeted.
According to the data courts most often relied on Article 8/A of Turkey’s internet law, a provision that allows authorities to order access bans when they argue that delays could harm national security or public order. The group said 496 pieces of content, or 38 percent, were blocked under that justification.
Another 443 items, or 33.9 percent, were blocked under broadly defined claims including violations of personal or trademark rights or cases deemed urgent.
The monitoring group said the scale and speed of blocking increased sharply in March, following the detention of Istanbul Mayor Ekrem İmamoğlu. It said access to major platforms including X, YouTube, Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, Telegram, Signal and WhatsApp was severely throttled for about 42 hours, ending on the morning of March 21.
During the same period, more than 700 accounts on X were restricted, according to the report. The report cited a statement from the platform saying it was appealing Turkish court orders seeking to block hundreds of accounts belonging to journalists, news organizations and political figures.
The group said court decisions issued after March 19 focused heavily on social media and included both account-level blocks and platform-wide bandwidth restrictions. At least 234 pieces of content were targeted during that period alone, it said.
İmamoğlu was detained on March 19, sparking nationwide protests, and was later arrested by a court in a corruption investigation before being suspended from office by the Interior Ministry.
In November prosecutors filed a nearly 4,000-page indictment accusing İmamoğlu of leading a criminal organization and committing 142 offenses, charges that could carry a combined sentence of up to 2,430 years in prison. The allegations include bribery, embezzlement, money laundering, extortion and bid rigging. İmamoğlu has strongly denied all accusations.
Critics say the cases are aimed at weakening President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s strongest political challenger ahead of the next presidential election, scheduled for 2028.
FreeWebTurkey linked the trend to changes in Turkey’s legal framework for online restrictions. In late 2024 the Constitutional Court annulled Article 9 of the internet law, a provision commonly used to block content based on alleged violations of personal rights. The annulment took effect on October 10, 2024, after lawmakers failed to pass a replacement.
Despite that repeal, the group said access blocking continued through other legal pathways, with Article 8/A increasingly used as a standard justification for removing content.
The report also cited earlier high-profile cases that shaped public debate over online controls. In August 2024 Instagram was blocked nationwide for eight days before access was restored following talks between the government and Meta, its parent company. Turkish officials said the ban would be lifted once unspecified concerns were addressed.
The group also pointed to the continued ban on the online gaming platform Roblox, which was blocked in August 2024 under Article 8/A. The group said Turkey ranked among Roblox’s largest user bases globally and that legal appeals against the ban were later rejected.
Beyond individual posts, the report said entire websites and digital archives were made inaccessible in some cases. It cited the blocking of the website of Kaos GL, a long-running LGBT rights media outlet, which it said rendered hundreds of articles and reports unavailable from within Turkey.
The monitoring group said restrictions in 2025 also extended to newer digital tools, including investigations affecting an artificial intelligence assistant linked to X, following requests from Turkey’s information and communications regulator.
