Social media platform X said the Turkish government has requested more than 700 accounts be blocked amid protests over the controversial arrest and jailing of Istanbul’s mayor—but X said it wouldn’t comply with the requests, even though some accounts say they’ve been censored.
University students march across Galata bridge during a protest after Istanbul's Mayor Ekrem ... More
In a statement posted to X, the company’s global affairs team said it received multiple court orders from the Turkish Information and Communication Technologies Authority to block “over 700 accounts of news organizations, journalists, political figures, students, and others within Türkiye.”
The statement called the request “unlawful” and said it would hinder “millions of Turkish users from news and political discourse in their country,” adding, “X will always defend freedom of speech everywhere we operate.”
But, on Saturday, Politico Europe reported X had already suspended a number of accounts “belonging to opposition figures,” including activist Ömer Faruk Aslan, who said in a post he made a new account after his former account “was blocked by a court order because the tweets exceeded 6 million views,” and news outlet Bianet, which said its account is censored.
Some of the accounts were reportedly only suspended in Turkey and remained viewable to people in other countries.
Forbes has reached out to X for comment.
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Last week, authorities arrested Istanbul Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu and said he must face trial for corruption charges, according to multiple outlets. Istanbul’s mayor is accused of leading a criminal organization, overseeing bribery, supporting terrorism, and more, according to The New York Times. Imamoglu, a member of the Republican People’s Party, is largely seen as the main political rival to Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, and his jailing has been viewed as a political move. Hours after he was jailed, his party elected him as its presidential candidate in the next election, which is scheduled for 2028. From March 19 to Sunday, there have been more than 1,100 people detained, Ali Yerlikata, Turkey’s minister of the interior, said on X, and the Times reported the protests that have followed have been the country’s largest in more than a decade.
Yes. In 2023, when Erdogan was up for reelection, then-Twitter’s global affairs team said in a post it had “taken action to restrict access to some content in Turkey” in response to the legal process and “to ensure Twitter remains available to the people of Turkey.” On his personal account, X owner Elon Musk responded to allegations of X not supporting free speech by saying, “The choice is have Twitter throttled in its entirety or limit access to some tweets.”
Exactly how many accounts are being censored in Turkey. In an X post, Yerlikata said authorities identified 326 accounts that were inciting crime, 72 of which were abroad. Yusuf Can, coordinator and analyst at the Wilson Center's Middle East Program, told Politico over the weekend most of the accounts were “grassroots activists” and “university-associated activist accounts, basically sharing protest information, locations for students to go.”
85.66%. That’s how many removal requests X complied with from Turkey in the back half of 2024, according to its global transparency report.
Musk’s X suspends opposition accounts in Turkey amid civil unrest (Politico Europe)
Turkey detains journalists as protests grow over the jailing of key Erdogan rival (Associated Press)
Journalists among more than 1,100 arrested in Turkey crackdown (The Guardian)