Turkey’s Information and Communication Technologies Authority (BTK) announced today that it has banned the Instagram app across the country, though no specific reasons were given for this abrupt decision.
Fahrettin Altun, Turkey’s Director of Communications, took to the X platform to explain that the decision was linked to censorship actions by Instagram and its parent company, Meta. He told that Instagram did not cite any policy violations as the cause. Meta has not yet commented on Turkey’s recent move.
Altun had earlier criticized Instagram for blocking posts that offered condolences for the death of Ismail Haniyeh, a Hamas political leader, in Tehran on July 31st.
The BTK published the ban notice on Friday, August 2nd, but provided no further details about the exact reasons or the duration of the app’s blockage.
As a result, over 50 million users in Turkey are currently unable to access Instagram, and Meta has yet to respond to Turkey’s decision.
