Turkish authorities blocked access to Instagram on Friday across the country in response to the popular social network’s policy of removing all condolence messages and images posted by users about Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh, who was assassinated by Israel.
The Information and Communication Technologies Authority of Turkey (BTK) announced this morning the blocking of Instagram through its official website, informing that “it had been blocked by a decision on 2 August 2024” but without giving further details about the reasons or how long the blocking will last; many Turkish users had already reported early in the morning through the social network X about the blocking, commenting that they were unable to refresh their Instagram feed.
However, several Turkish newspapers reported today that behind the blocking of Meta‘s popular social network could be the company’s “censorship policy” of removing images and posts published by users to express their condolences for the death of Ismail Haniyeh, the Hamas political leader assassinated this week.
Just a few days ago Turkish President Tayyip Erdoğan‘s communications chief and advisor, Fahrettin Altun, accused Instagram of “preventing people from posting messages of condolences for martyr Haniyeh”, adding that the platform is practising a de facto censorship without claiming any reason or violation of its policies for doing so. “This is censorship, pure and simple. We will defend freedom of expression against these platforms that have so often proven themselves to be primarily in the service of a global system that exploits injustice,” Altun said.
Instagram is estimated to have more than 50 million users in Turkey, a country of 85 million people, which has declared Friday a national day of mourning for Haniyeh’s death. “A day of national mourning will be declared (…) in solidarity with the Palestinian cause and in solidarity with our Palestinian brothers and sisters,” Erdoğan announced yesterday via his X profile, referring to Haniyeh as a “martyr” of the Palestinian cause.
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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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