A Turkish court blocked access to 82 accounts operated by Kurdish politicians, journalists, publishers and media houses on social media platform X (formerly Twitter) on the grounds of “protecting national security”.
Eighty-two accounts on X operated by Kurdish politicians, journalists, publishers and media houses have been blocked in Turkey by a court for “making terrorist propaganda”.
“The decision was made on the grounds of ‘protecting national security and public order’ and claimed that these people ‘made propaganda for a terrorist organisation with all their posts’”, Free Web Turkey, a platform established by the Media and Law Studies Association, MLSA, to monitor internet freedoms in the country, announced on Monday.
The X account owners include the honorary president of the pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party, HDP, Al Monitor’s chief correspondent Amberin Zaman and Yeni Yasam newspaper.
The same court also blocked access to the X account of a German politician of Kurdish descent. Cansu Ozdemir, who leads the Left in Hamburg and has been member of Hamburg’s parliament since 2009.
The court in Gumushane province in northwestern Turkey ordered the access block on August 20 based on a request from the Gumushane Provincial Gendarmerie Command. The court decision said that the blocked accounts “contain content that supports terrorist organisations”.
Rights groups, opposition and international organisations say the autocratic government of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan often deploys courts to target its critics online.
A report published in July by the Free Web Turkey platform identified at least 219,059 items of online content blocked by court order in 2023, including almost 198,000 internet domains, 14,680 news articles, over 5,600 social media posts and some 743 social media accounts.
The Turkish government blocked access to several social media platforms earlier in August, including META’s Instagram and the popular online game platform Roblox. The ban on Instagram was lifted on August 10.