Turkey Blocks Access to Instagram. It's in Response to Removal of Posts on Hamas Chief, Reports Say

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Turkey Blocks Access to Instagram. It’s in Response to Removal of Posts on Hamas Chief, Reports Say

August 2, 2024

FILE - Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan speaks during a news conference in Ankara, Turkey, May 13, 2024. (AP Photo/Burhan Ozbilici, File)

ANKARA, Turkey (AP) — Turkey’s communications authority blocked access to the social media platform Instagram on Friday, the latest instance of a clampdown on websites in the country.

The Information and Communication Technologies Authority, which regulates the internet, announced the decision early Friday but did not provide a reason.

Yeni Safak newspaper, which is close to the government, and other media said access was blocked in response to Instagram removing posts by Turkish users that expressed condolences over the killing of Hamas political leader Ismail Haniyeh.

“Sanctions for Instagram’s blackout policy were swift. The Information Technologies and Communication Authority blocked access to Instagram,” Yeni Safak stated in its online edition.

Earlier, Fahrettin Altun, the presidential communications director and aide to President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, had strongly criticized the Meta-owned platform for preventing users in Turkey from posting messages of condolences for Haniyeh.

There was no immediate comment from Instagram, which has over 50 million users in Turkey, a nation with a population of 85 million.

Unlike its Western allies, Turkey does not consider Hamas to be a terror organization. A strong critic of Israel’s military actions in Gaza, Erdogan has described the group as “liberation fighters.”

The country is observing a day of mourning for Haniyeh on Friday, during which flags are being flown at half-staff.

Ekrem Imamoglu, the mayor of Istanbul and a member of Turkey’s main opposition party, denounced the decision to block Instagram, accusing the communications authority of acting like a “censorship unit.”

“Social media is a platform that everyone uses for many purposes, including for commerce and communicating,” Imamoglu wrote on X. “It is unacceptable that a platform used by the entire country is arbitrarily shut down one morning.”

Turkey has a track record of censoring social media and websites. Hundreds of thousands of domains have been blocked since 2022, according to the Freedom of Expression Association, a non-profit organization regrouping lawyers and human rights activists. The video-sharing platform YouTube was blocked from 2007 to 2010.

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