Turkey blocked access to the social network Instagram on Friday, the national communications agency said without explanation, as a senior Turkish official accused the US company of censorship.
The BTK Communications Directorate announced in a post on its website that "instagram.com was blocked by a decision dated August 02.08.2024, XNUMX".
Many users living in Turkey have complained on the X network that they cannot refresh their Instagram feed.
Turkish presidential communications director Fahretin Altun criticized Instagram, which is owned by Meta, on Wednesday, accusing the platform of "preventing people from posting messages of condolence for the martyr Haniyeh."
Ismail Haniyeh, the political leader of the Palestinian Hamas - considered a terrorist organization by the US and the EU - and a close ally of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, was killed in Tehran on Wednesday in an attack blamed on Israel.
"This is a very clear and obvious attempt at censorship," Altun said on the X network.
According to Turkish media, there are more than 50 million registered Instagram users in Turkey, out of a population of 85 million.
This is not the first time that Turkish authorities have blocked access to social media sites.
Wikipedia was blocked between April 2017 and January 2020 due to two articles citing a link between the presidency and extremism.
It caused shockwaves in a country where Erdogan's government has often been accused of attacking civil liberties because of the amount of online information that has become inaccessible.
In April, Meta suspended its social network Threads in Turkey after the authorities there decided to prevent it from sharing information with Instagram.
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