The social network X, owned by American billionaire Elon Musk, has blocked a number of Turkish opposition accounts amid protests against the arrest of Istanbul Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu, who is President Erdoganʼs main rival.
Politico writes about this.
The coordinator and analyst for the Wilson Centerʼs Middle East Program Yusuf Kahn told the publication that most of the blocked accounts belonged to people who were spreading information about the protests and their locations. Some profiles are blocked only in Turkey, but they remain accessible in other countries.
One of the activists Omer Faruk Aslan said that he created a new account after his previous profile, where his posts had garnered 6 million views, was blocked by a court order.
In addition to X, problems with access to TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube have been reported in Turkey.
Turkish Interior Minister Ali Yerlikaya said authorities had identified 326 accounts that allegedly "incited hatred", 72 of them outside the country. 54 people were detained as part of the investigation.
Blocking accounts is likely legal, as Turkish law allows such actions if the government demands them. The 2022 Social Media Law allows the government to monitor and remove content on social media, although the rules on this are vague and can be applied very broadly.
This isn’t the first time X has restricted access to content in the country. In 2023, when Erdogan was running for re-election, X (formerly Twitter) restricted access to certain content in Turkey to keep the platform accessible to users in the country. Elon Musk explained that the choice was between blocking Twitter entirely or restricting access to a subset of tweets.
X reports that in the second half of 2024, the company complied with about 86% of the Turkish government’s requests to remove content, compared to 68% in the first half of the year. This is lower than the European Union, where the compliance rate was 90%. However, Turkish authorities file six times more account removal requests than the EU on a per capita basis.
- Istanbul Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu was detained on March 19. Authorities are investigating his links to corruption and terrorism. Earlier, Istanbul University revoked the politicianʼs degree, allegedly for irregularities.
- Thousands of people took to the streets of Istanbul on March 19 after his arrest. He is seen as the main political rival of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
- Imamoglu has been elected mayor twice, in 2019 and 2023, defeating candidates from the ruling conservative Justice and Development Party of Recep Tayyip Erdogan. The Turkish president also began his political career as mayor of Istanbul in the 1990s.
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