Access from Turkey to numerous social media accounts, including those of journalists Şirin Payzın and İrfan Değirmenci, as well as soL Haber, Kadın Koalisyonu and Türkiye Kadın Dernekleri Federasyonu, has been blocked. İfade Özgürlüğü Derneği reported that the decisions were issued as part of operations targeting LGBTI+ rights organizations and activists in 15 provinces. It was stated that X has not yet withheld the accounts in Turkey.
Following the access blocks that began on September 12, 32 X accounts were blocked on September 13, while numerous X and Instagram accounts, including those of the Evrensel newspaper, Uluslararası Af Örgütü Türkiye, Barış Akademisyenleri, MLSA and Ali İsmail Korkmaz Vakfı, were blocked on September 14.
Why it matters
The fact that the blocks extend from journalists to women’s organizations and from human rights organizations to news outlets shows that the decisions linked to the operations in 15 provinces affect not only actors in the field of LGBTI+ rights but also the public circulation of information. The chronology from September 12-14 shows that, rather than being a one-off measure, the decisions targeted different groups of accounts in succession. The fact that X has not yet withheld the accounts in Turkey indicates that, for now, there is a distinction between the legal blocking decision and actual access on the platform, and that the decision has not yet been implemented at platform level. This leaves open the questions of how long users will be able to access these accounts and whether the platform will implement the decisions.