Turkey’s national communications authority, BTK, announced on Friday that it has blocked access to the social media platform Instagram.
According to the AFP, the authority’s brief statement on its website indicated the decision was made on August 2, 2024, but provided no further details.
The move follows accusations of censorship against Instagram by Fahrettin Altun, the communications director for the Turkish presidency.
Altun criticized the Meta-owned platform for allegedly preventing users from posting condolence messages for Ismail Haniyeh, the political chief of Hamas, who was killed in Tehran in an attack blamed on Israel.
Altun condemned Instagram’s actions on the social media platform X, describing them as “a very clear and obvious attempt at censure.”
The block has affected over 50 million Instagram users in Turkey, out of a population of 85 million.
Many users took to X to express their frustration over the inability to refresh their Instagram feeds, a problem confirmed by AFP journalists.
The decision has also sparked reactions and mockery on other social media platforms, with memes and comments highlighting the disruption caused by the block.
This is not the first instance of Turkey blocking access to major social media sites. Wikipedia was inaccessible from April 2017 to January 2020 due to articles linking the presidency to extremism.
In April, Meta suspended its Threads social network in Turkey after authorities prohibited it from sharing information with Instagram.
