A Turkish court has ordered a ban on access to the popular video chat application Azar, which has a large user base in the country, Turkish Minute reported.
According to the Information and Communication Technologies Authority (BTK), the decision was issued on August 22 by Ankara’s 4th Penal Court of Peace. The ruling blocks access to the app’s website, azarlive.com.
The court has not provided an official explanation for the ruling. Users across Turkey reported they were unable to access the real-time video communication platform following the decision.
Founded in 2014 under IT company Hyperconnect, based in South Korea, Azar enables users to be connected through an AI matching system.
While the exact user number for Azar in Turkey is not available, market analytics from the first quarter of 2024 indicate that Azar had approximately 447,900 active users in Turkey by the end of March 2024, with the data coming from Sensor Tower’s report on social networking app performance in Turkey.
Turkey has in recent years ramped up its control over digital platforms through a series of laws that expand state oversight of online content. Authorities routinely block access to websites, investigate social media posts and sanction platforms for non-compliance with government content removal orders.
The restriction on Azar comes after similar access bans in the country in recent years targeting Discord, Instagram and Roblox, both widely used by Turkish internet users.
The country even blocked access to some content generated by Grok, the AI tool developed by social media platform X in July.
The probe the targeting the AI-powered chatbot was launched on alleged insults directed at Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, the founder of the secular, modern Republic of Turkey, and religious values, according to the state-run Anadolu news agency.
The access bans are typically enforced through the BTK and the Penal Courts of Peace, which critics say act with little transparency or accountability.
Turkey was ranked the lowest-scoring country in Europe for online freedoms, according to a report from the Washington-based Freedom House last October. Turkey has a score of 31 in a 100-point index, with scores based on a scale of 0 (least free) to 100 (most free) and is listed as “not free.”
