Istanbul:

Turkey began unblocking Instagram Saturday evening after depriving access to millions of users for nine days.

“Following our negotiations with representatives of Instagram, we will unblock access starting from 9:30 pm (1830 GMT) after they agreed to respond to our demands,” transport and infrastructure minister Abdulkadir Uraloglu said on X.

Instagram access began to progressively return after that time, AFP reporters noted.

“Since the beginning, we have wanted social media platforms to respect the laws of the Republic,” Uraloglu insisted.

The platform had been blocked since the morning of August 2 for reasons that were never fully explained.

Saturday evening the minister mentioned “violations linked to content”, adding that Instagram had refused to delete thousands of posts involving “gambling, drugs and abuse of children”.

Meta, the owner of Instagram, denied not cooperating, saying it had withdrawn almost 2,500 posts in the first half of the year at the request of Turkish authorities.

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s communications director, Fahrettin Altun, accused Instagram of blocking messages of condolence for Ismael Haniyeh, political leader of the Palestinian group Hamas and a close ally of Erdogan’s.

Haniyeh was killed in Tehran last month in an attack blamed on Israel.

Between 60 and 70 percent of Turkey’s 85 million inhabitants have an Instagram account, and about $57 million of business is carried out on the site each day, according to Emre Ekmekci, vice-president of an e-commerce association.

Access to the online game Roblox, particularly popular in Turkey, remained blocked for a fourth day Saturday evening.

(This story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)

This picture taken in Istanbul on August 2, 2024, shows the logo of the social network Instagram on a smartphone with the Turkish flag in the background. Turkey on August 2, 2024 blocked access to the Instagram social media network, the national communications authority said without explanation, following censorship accusations against the US company by a high-ranking official.
| Photo Credit: AFP

Turkiye’s communications authority blocked access to the social media platform Instagram on August 2, the latest instance of a clampdown on websites in the country.

The Information and Communication Technologies Authority, which regulates the internet, announced the decision early Friday but did not provide a reason.

Yeni Safak newspaper, which is close to the government, and other media said access was blocked in response to Instagram removing posts by Turkish users that expressed condolences over the killing of Hamas political leader Ismail Haniyeh.

“Sanctions for Instagram’s blackout policy were swift. The Information Technologies and Communication Authority blocked access to Instagram,” Yeni Safak stated in its online edition.

Earlier, Fahrettin Altun, the presidential communications director and aide to President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, had strongly criticized the Meta-owned platform for preventing users in Turkiye from posting messages of condolences for Haniyeh.

The transportation and infrastructure minister, Abdulkadir Uraloglu, maintained that Instagram had ignored “sensitivities” and was in breach of a so-called inventory of serious crimes, which include incitement to suicide, torture, obscenity, crimes against the state’s security and child sexual abuse, among others. He did not elaborate which particular crime the platform is alleged to have breached.

“When they don’t abide by laws and our regulations and don’t take our societal sensitivities into consideration, we are obliged to make the necessary interventions,” he said.

The minister said Turkish authorities were in contact with Instagram’s representative in Turkiye.

“When they fulfill the requirements, we will lift the ban,” he said.

Uraloglu’s deputy, Omer Fatih Sayan, wrote on X: “We will do what is needed to establish a social media that respects our values, is free of disinformation, and is cleaner and more secure.”

There was no immediate comment from Instagram, which has over 50 million users in Turkiye, a nation with a population of 85 million.

Unlike its Western allies, Turkiye does not consider Hamas to be a terror organization. A strong critic of Israel’s military actions in Gaza, Erdogan has described the group as “liberation fighters.”

The country is observing a day of mourning for Haniyeh on Friday, during which flags are being flown at half-staff.

Ekrem Imamoglu, the mayor of Istanbul and a member of Turkiye’s main opposition party, denounced the decision to block Instagram, accusing the communications authority of acting like a “censorship unit.”

“Social media is a platform that everyone uses for many purposes, including for commerce and communicating,” Imamoglu wrote on X. “It is unacceptable that a platform used by the entire country is arbitrarily shut down one morning.”

Turkiye has a track record of censoring social media and websites. Hundreds of thousands of domains have been blocked since 2022, according to the Freedom of Expression Association, a non-profit organization regrouping lawyers and human rights activists. The video-sharing platform YouTube was blocked from 2007 to 2010.