ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - The website of Turkey’s constitutional court was inaccessible late Friday morning, hours after posting an article on X, a move in apparent defiance to a previous ban on Instagram imposed by the country’s information and communications authority. Social media users across Turkey had difficulty accessing Instagram on Friday morning, Rudaw English had confirmed. Meta’s other platforms like Facebook and WhatsApp were still accessible. The Turkish Information and Communications Technologies Authority (BTK), the body responsible for monitoring the Internet, only announced that “instagram.com has been blocked by a decision on the date of 02/08/2024." Hours after blocking Instagram, the official account of the Turkish Constitutional Court shared an article on X from its official website with the caption: “Revocation of laws that would allow the Communications Authority to interfere with freedom of the press and freedom of expression.” However, the post was deleted soon after it was published. Following the deletion of the post, the constitutional court’s website was inaccessible late Friday morning. Censoring Instagram comes a day after Turkish authorities slammed the platform for preventing people from posting pro-Palestine content and sharing condolence messages for Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh, who was assassinated in the Iranian capital of Tehran early Wednesday. “I also strongly condemn the social media platform Instagram which is actively preventing people from posting messages of condolences for the passing of Hamas leader Haniyeh without citing any policy violations,” said Turkey’s Head of Communications Fahrettin Altun on X on Thursday. “This is censorship, pure and simple.” The censoring of Instagram became the subject of mocking and ridicule across other social media platforms, while political leaders and journalists slammed the decision. “What's this nonsense about blocking access to Instagram?” said Muharrem Ince, the opposition leader of the Memleket (Homeland) Party wrote on X on Friday, tagging President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. “If you're really that upset, just delete your own Instagram account. That way, both you and we can be at peace!” he added. While Ismail Saymaz, a journalist close to the opposition’s Republican People’s Party (CHP), wrote on X on Friday: “We couldn't enter Israel, so let's at least enter Instagram.” For his part, Erdogan posted a feel-good story on Instagram after the ban, as he does most Fridays, a tradition among Muslim Turks to celebrate their “holiest” day of the week. However, it was deleted around noon. Imposing sanctions and restricting the services of tech companies is not new in Turkey. The government of Erdogan often has been accused of targeting civil liberties for restricting free speech and political expression on social media platforms. In 2023, X (then Twitter) restricted access to “some content” in Turkey to ensure that the social media platform remained accessible in the days before the country’s presidential election. This April, Meta suspended its Threads platform in Turkey, after a decision from Turkish authorities that blocked it from sharing information with Instagram. From 2017 to 2020, Turkey’s information and technologies authority BTK also blocked access to Wikipedia after the website’s administrators refused to remove two pages stating that Ankara had channeled support to extremists in Syria. BTK said the law empowers it to ban access to any website deemed obscene or a threat to national security.
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