Turkey announced early Wednesday the blocking of Discord, a popular social networking and instant messaging app, which authorities accuse of promoting crime, assault and sexual abuse of minors; in particular, social alarm has been triggered by a recent crime in which a psychologically disturbed 19-year-old Semih Çelik murdered and dismembered his girlfriend and a classmate in Istanbul and then committed suicide – a murder that was praised by several Discord users.
Turkish media reported that the Information and Communication Technologies Agency (BTK) proceeded to block access to Discord in Turkey after a court in Ankara ordered the measure due to ‘suspicions’ that the app may have been used to promote ‘sexual abuse of children and other obscenities’.
In particular, the Turkish press comments on worrying cases in which Discord users shared photos and videos of children’s private parts, praised cases of femicide and violence against women, or encouraged sexual harassment. In one particular video posted on Discord, it was reported that a group of young men harassed an underage girl and forced her to self-harm. In other cases, the platform was used to force underage girls to carry out actions against their will or to pay sums of money under threat of publicly sharing private information.
There were also multiple reports and allegations of certain groups using the Discord application to commit crimes of blackmail, sexual abuse or cyberbullying against minors. Investigations subsequently launched describe a wide range of criminal activities carried out through the platform, including ‘theft of personal data, threats and harassment of minors, paedophilia, credit card theft and animal torture’, according to Turkish media reports.
‘We have been forced to block access’
‘We are determined to protect our youth and children (…) from harmful and criminal publications on social networks and the internet,’ Turkish Justice Minister Yılmaz Tunç wrote on his profile on X. “We will never tolerate attempts to undermine the foundations of our society,” Tunç added.
For his part Transport and Infrastructure Minister Abdulkadir Uraloğlu pointed out that Discord’s own functioning makes it difficult for authorities to detect and intervene when illegal content is shared or crimes are committed on the platform: ‘Since Discord refuses to share with us its own data, including IP addresses and (law-breaking) content, we have been forced to block access,’ the minister confirmed.
Discord, a platform that started years ago as a chat room for video game fans but has evolved into a popular social and messaging network for sharing videos, audio or text messages, has an estimated 150 million users, many of them also employees of companies that use it even for their own internal communications. The announcement of the blocking of Discord is reminiscent of another measure taken last August in Turkey against Roblox, a well-known video game platform that the Turkish authorities accused of inciting child abuse, among other crimes.
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Pablo Gómez is a specialist in Turkey and has been editor-in-chief of Hispanatolia since 2011. He has been analysing current affairs and geopolitics in Turkey and the surrounding region since 2006.
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