Turkish officials have accused Instagram of preventing users from posting condolences following the death of Hamas chief Ismail Haniyeh.
Turkish authorities have blocked access to Instagram after officials in Ankara accused the platform of “censorship” regarding the death of Hamas political chief Ismail Haniyeh.
According to Türkiye’s Information and Communication Technologies Authority (BTK), access to the social media platform was blocked on Friday. There has been no official explanation for the action, nor any indication of how long the ban will last.
Fahrettin Altun, Türkiye’s communications chief, criticized Meta-owned Instagram earlier this week for its response to Haniyeh’s killing. The Hamas political leader was killed in a bombing in Tehran on Wednesday, with the Palestinian militant group and Iran accusing Israel of orchestrating the attack. While West Jerusalem has neither denied nor confirmed involvement, it has repeatedly vowed to destroy Islamist “terrorists” who threaten the Jewish state.
Altun “strongly condemned” Instagram, alleging it had “prevented people from posting condolences on Haniyeh’s martyrdom without giving any reason.”
“This is a very clear and obvious attempt at censorship,” he argued, vowing that Ankara “will continue to defend freedom of expression against these platforms, which have repeatedly shown that they serve the global system of exploitation and injustice.”
As of February 2024, there were approximately 58 million Instagram users in Türkiye, a country with a population of 83 million, according to Statista. It’s important to note that one person can create multiple accounts on the platform.
Türkiye has temporarily banned various social networks several times in the past. In 2014, the country’s authorities blocked Twitter and YouTube for two weeks and two months respectively, after leaked videos purporting to show corruption at the highest levels of government went viral.
Wikipedia was also blocked by Türkiye in 2017 and 2020, over an article that described the country as a state sponsor of several terrorist groups. In 2019, the country’s Constitutional Court ruled that the move violated human rights and ordered the ban to be lifted.