In Türkiye, access-blocking orders in 2026 are targeting not only news reports and websites but also the social media accounts of journalists, news outlets, academics and civil society organizations. Most of the orders are based on Article 8/A of Law No. 5651, Türkiye’s main law regulating online content, which allows restrictions on grounds including the protection of “national security and public order.”
Account owners, however, often cannot find out who issued the order or the specific grounds on which it was based. Professors Yaman Akdeniz and Ceren Sözeri, information technology lawyer Gökhan Ahi and soL Haber Editor-in-Chief Yiğit Günay assessed how the access-blocking mechanism operates and what it means for freedom of expression.
Meltem Akyol
What content is being blocked online in Türkiye, on what grounds and on what scale?
According to a statement by Presidential Communications Director Burhanettin Duran on Sept. 4, 2026, access to 2,034 social media accounts was blocked in July and August alone.
The Freedom of Expression Association’s (İFÖD) 2025 EngelliWeb Report said that by the end of 2025, 875 different institutions and judgeships had issued 1,284,464 decisions blocking access to a total of 1,505,484 websites and domain names.
According to Interior Ministry data dated Sept. 15, around 40,000 web pages had been shut down and 73,000 social media accounts blocked since the beginning of 2026 as part of “cyber patrol” activities carried out across Türkiye.
In Türkiye, where 92.3% of the population uses the internet according to 2026 data from the Turkish Statistical Institute, or TurkStat, news is followed primarily through social media. As a result, restrictions imposed on social media accounts can effectively prevent news reports from reaching readers even when the reports themselves remain accessible online.
Who is being targeted?
Journalists, news outlets, academics, trade unionists and civil society organizations are among those whose accounts have been targeted by access-blocking orders in recent months.
They include the Evrensel newspaper, news outlet Kısa Dalga, Prof. Dr. Veysel Ulusoy, founder of the Inflation Research Group (ENAG), political economist İnan Mutlu, Prof. Dr. Barış Övgün, Başaran Aksu, a co-founder of the Umut-Sen labor organization, economics writer Uğur Gürses, actor Orhan Aydın, journalists İrfan Değirmenci, Şirin Payzın and Hilmi Hacaloğlu, and the Federation of Turkish Women’s Associations. Some of their accounts have already been blocked, while in other cases blocking orders have been issued but have yet to be implemented. The X account of MLSA, which is publishing this news report, has also been blocked.
The restrictions are not limited to news content. As part of operations dubbed “My Family Is Safe,” access was blocked to 423 URLs belonging to 292 people, as well as 96 websites and social media accounts.
According to information reported in the media, access-blocking orders have also been issued for accounts that post about investments and capital markets and have a combined following of 12 million.
Legal basis: Article 8/A of Law No. 5651
Most of the decisions are based on Article 8/A of Türkiye’s Law No. 5651 on the regulation of online content. The provision allows access to be blocked on grounds including the protection of the right to life, personal safety and property, national security and public order, the prevention of crime and the protection of public health.
Orders issued by Criminal Judgeships of Peace are generally implemented the same day, while news reports about access-blocking decisions have at times faced the same fate.
According to the EngelliWeb report, Article 8/A, which in previous years was used mainly against Kurdish and left-wing news outlets and opposition journalists, expanded radically in scope in 2025. One of the main reasons for that shift was a legal vacuum created after Türkiye’s Constitutional Court annulled Article 9 of Law No. 5651, which had regulated the removal of online content on grounds that it violated personal rights.
Information technology lawyer Gökhan Ahi describes Article 8/A as a “vague Swiss Army knife.” He says the provision offers authorities an extremely broad range of grounds for blocking content and that there is no effective judicial review of such decisions.
The appeal process ends at the level of the Criminal Judgeship of Peace, and the decisions are not reviewed by a regional appeals court or the Court of Cassation, Türkiye’s highest court of appeals for civil and criminal cases.
Ahi says the recent practice of implementing blocking decisions en masse has transformed access restrictions from an exceptional judicial measure into a routine practice.
Decision issued, but account holders are not notified
People or organizations whose accounts are blocked are often told only that a decision has been issued against them and implemented. They are not informed which judgeship issued the order, who requested it or which specific post was cited as the basis for the restriction. Anyone seeking to challenge the decision must first track down that information.
Prof. Dr. Yaman Akdeniz, a co-founder of the Freedom of Expression Association (İFÖD) who has worked on digital censorship in Türkiye for 20 years, had his X account, which he had used for 18 years, blocked in Türkiye in the same way. Akdeniz was one of the applicants in a case before the Constitutional Court that played a role in keeping X accessible in Türkiye.
Akdeniz said he would challenge the decision but first had to determine which judgeship had issued it.
“X knows, the Cybersecurity Presidency knows, and the authority that requested it — whether a prosecutor’s office or an individual — knows. But I don’t,” he said. “I have to find out which of the more than 700 Criminal Judgeships of Peace in Türkiye issued this decision and then file an objection. Many of my tweets have been blocked before, and I have 10 to 15 applications pending before the Constitutional Court. I will file an application over this restriction as well.”
Yiğit Günay, editor-in-chief of soL Haber, described a similar process. According to Günay, blocking instructions are sent directly to the platform without waiting for a court order, while the news organization itself is not treated as a party to the proceedings.
“The decision is not served on us, and X does not provide it either,” Günay said. “First, you have to find out which court issued the decision, then go there and obtain a copy so that they will recognize you as a party to the case. Some courts may refuse to do so or make the process difficult. As a result, challenging the decision is cumbersome.”
Blocked accounts, replacement accounts
Some organizations whose accounts have been blocked have tried to continue publishing by opening new ones, only to see those accounts blocked again within a short period.
soL Haber’s X account, which had 924,000 followers, was blocked ahead of the NATO Summit. The news outlet has been blocked four times since then and is currently using its fifth account.
Akdeniz, however, said he does not plan to open a new account.
“I have nothing against those who do, but any new account I open would face the same risk,” he said.
“Social media platforms are today’s newsstands”
Günay likens the blocking of social media accounts to shutting down a newspaper stand.
“Social media accounts are, in a sense, today’s newsstands,” he said. “What the X bans amount to is this: Someone calls the newsstand and says, ‘You will not sell this newspaper.’ What is more, the person making that call is not a prosecutor or a judge. Someone who is part of the executive branch gets the account blocked and then goes to obtain a court order after the sanction has already been imposed.
“If a news report constitutes a crime, then action should be taken against it. But the news report remains online, there is no allegation of a crime, no investigation and no trial. On other platforms, the product is still sitting on the shelf.”
Türkiye’s Constitutional Court has ruled in numerous previous decisions that access-blocking measures were disproportionate and imposed excessive restrictions on freedom of expression. The practice has nevertheless continued.
Prof. Dr. Ceren Sözeri said the blocking of social media accounts cannot be considered separately from restrictions imposed on websites and individual news reports, and that taken together, they reveal a systematic pattern.
The Constitutional Court previously struck down powers granted to the police and gendarmerie to conduct online patrols. Sözeri said, however, that restrictions can still be imposed on the basis of complaints filed against accounts.
“You can report someone you dislike and get their account shut down,” she said. “Because there are no defined criteria and no clear legal basis being applied, the system operates arbitrarily. Meanwhile, people who defraud others and those who become mouthpieces for artificially inflated investment funds somehow do not get caught by these patrols.”
According to information technology lawyer Gökhan Ahi, another consequence of access restrictions is just as significant as their direct impact: self-censorship.
“We can count the people whose accounts have been shut down, but we cannot measure how many journalists resort to self-censorship out of fear that their accounts will be closed,” he said.
Akdeniz said he expects such interventions to intensify.
“They no longer want criticism,” he said. “They do not want their controversial policies to be discussed. They are not going to let us use this platform.”
Sözeri concluded: “Perhaps one day, a political history of Türkiye will be written solely through the news reports that were blocked.”
