Even today, for the fourth consecutive day, Turkey woke up still without access to Instagram while President Recep Tayyip Erdogan accused the platform owned by Meta (which also controls Facebook and Whatsapp) of “digital fascism” because it is unable to “tolerate photos of dead Palestinians” without censoring them.
The decision to block access to Instagram throughout Turkey was announced on August 2 on the website of the Turkish Information and Communications Technology Authority (BTK), which did not provide any explanation. The move – which has not yet been officially justified – had triggered an immediate reaction from the main opposition parties, the social democratic CHP and the nationalist Iyi Party, which have taken legal action at the Ankara court to revoke the ban. But instead of responding and explaining what was happening, a series of subsequent statements by some key Turkish officials have only further confused the issue.
Confusing accusations
The problem, according to what emerged in the early hours of last Friday, was linked to the alleged refusal by the platform to block some phantom “criminal content”.
“Our country has values and sensitivity,” said the Turkish Minister of Transport and Infrastructure, Abdulkadir Uraloglu, who announced a meeting with representatives of the platform for this afternoon. “Despite our warnings, they did not consider the criminal content. We imposed a ban on access. If they respect our laws, the ban will be lifted.” However, as in the announcement by the Turkish Information and Communication Technology Authority (Btk), no further details were provided.
Something more – and different – had instead emerged from the statements of Fahrettin Altun, director of communications at the Turkish presidency and spokesman for the head of state Recep Tayyip Erdogan. According to this version, Instagram’s “fault” concerned an alleged censorship related to the death of the political leader of Hamas, Ismail Haniyeh, killed on July 31 in Tehran, Iran, during an attack attributed to Israel.
From his profile X (formerly Twitter) Altun had in fact accused Meta’s social network of “actively preventing people from posting messages of condolence for the death of the Hamas leader, without citing any violation of the rules”.
Then for three days nothing. Until today, when the Turkish president confirmed the political motivations of the measure, without however clarifying exactly whether Ankara’s problem with Instagram concerns the failure to censor some alleged illicit content or the actual censorship of photos of the massacres carried out by Israel in the Gaza Strip.
Erdogan’s declaration of “war”
“We are facing a digital fascism that cannot even tolerate photos of Palestinian martyrs without immediately banning them,” he said. declared Erdogan speaking at a meeting of his party at the AKP headquarters in Ankara.
“These companies have declared war on the glorious resistance and heroes of the Palestinian people in the virtual world. We see them acting like a mafia whenever their interests are at stake,” he continued, addressing the leaders of his movement.
“This is nothing new. We have already seen them operating with double standards when it comes to Turkey. Lies and provocations have become the hallmark of these platforms,” Erdogan added, muddying the waters.
According to the Turkish president, in fact, social networks “play by the rules in America and Europe, but they knowingly disregard them when it comes to combating crimes related to illegal content in Turkey.” Again, it is not clear whether the problem is Instagram’s attitude towards information that is unwelcome to the Turkish government or towards what is happening in Gaza.
In any case, the head of state revealed to his supporters that he had tried “to establish a dialogue” with the platform. “But we have not yet managed to fully establish the desired cooperation.” In the meantime, however, access to Instagram remains blocked in Turkey where, according to local media, the social network has more than 50 million members out of 85 million inhabitants.
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