Turkish authorities blocked access to the entire website of independent news outlet T24 and restricted at least 12 journalists’ accounts on X during the week of Sept. 28-Oct. 4, as courts and state agencies imposed several waves of online censorship.
The X accounts of EngelliWeb, a project that documents online access restrictions in Turkey, and the Freedom of Expression Association (İFÖD), which runs the project, were also blocked during the week.
The restrictions came in several waves on X, affecting at least 150 accounts on Sept. 28, at least 147 on Sept. 30, at least 31 on Oct. 3 and at least 88 overnight from Oct. 4 to Oct. 5. A significant number of the decisions cited “the protection of national security and public order” under Article 8/A of Law No. 5651, Turkey’s main law regulating online content.
The Istanbul 1st Criminal Judgeship of Peace blocked access to T24’s website and its X account, which has 1.9 million followers, in a decision dated Sept. 29 and numbered 2026/8894.
The decision was issued as part of an investigation by the Istanbul Chief Public Prosecutor’s Office known as “Ailem Güvende,” or “My Family Is Safe.”
Prosecutors alleged that 118 pieces of content published by T24 over the previous year amounted to “LGBT propaganda.” The Criminal Judgeship of Peace initially rejected the request to block access, but after the prosecutor’s office appealed, access was blocked not only to the content cited in the application but to T24’s entire website.
The ruling cited the “prevention of crime and protection of public order” under Article 8/A.
The Media and Law Studies Association (MLSA), together with 12 other journalism organizations, issued a joint statement on Sept. 30 calling for the decision to be immediately reversed. The groups said the ruling violated freedom of the press and freedom of expression and directly obstructed the public’s right to receive news and information.
“We will continue to defend our profession and our colleagues,” the statement said.
The Turkish Journalists’ Association issued a separate statement calling for the access block to be lifted.
T24 informed Turkey’s Access Providers Union that it had removed the content covered by the ruling within four hours. X did not make T24’s account inaccessible in Turkey, and T24 changed the account’s username to @t24comtr_. Access to the new username was also blocked on Oct. 2 on the same grounds.
Among the accounts blocked on Sept. 28 were those belonging to BirGün reporters Meral Danyıldız and Sarya Toprak and ANKA News Agency courthouse reporter Esra Tokat. Bizim TV’s X account and the accounts of lawyers Sena Yazıbağlı and Tuncay Koç were also blocked that day.
A significant number of those accounts had shared posts about an investment fund investigation, the killing of 8-year-old Narin Güran in the southeastern Turkish province of Diyarbakır in 2024 and the Furkan Movement, a religious group.
On Oct. 1, the accounts of bianet editor Hikmet Adal, Halk TV editor Dinçer Gökçe and journalists Tuğçe Yılmaz, Onur Dalar and Furkan Karabay were blocked. Tokat’s new account was also blocked that day, meaning one of her accounts had been subjected to an access restriction for the second time in four days.
A new account created by journalist Alican Uludağ using a previously blocked username was also subjected to an access restriction and made inaccessible in Turkey by X.
Accounts blocked on Oct. 3 included those of journalist and author Akın Olgun, former Boğaziçi University faculty member professor Tuna Tuğcu and stock market commentator Ayhan Dadaloğlu.
EngelliWeb’s X account was blocked on Oct. 1. The project records websites, news reports and social media accounts that have been blocked in Turkey.
The decision was conveyed to X by Turkey’s Cybersecurity Presidency under Article 8/A, while details of the decision were not shared with İFÖD. X later made the account inaccessible in Turkey.
İFÖD’s own X account was blocked overnight from Oct. 4 to Oct. 5. The account of the association’s founder, professor Yaman Akdeniz, had been blocked a week earlier.
Others whose accounts were blocked that night included journalists Hamdi Çelikbaş and Yiğit Uzun; Ömer Faruk Eminağaoğlu, a retired judge and former president of YARSAV, an association of judges and prosecutors; software developer Fatih Kadir Akın; clinical psychologist Kıvılcım Kıran; the Women’s Party; and painter Onur Bolat, known online as “Hikmeti Tabiyeci.”
Most of the accounts blocked on Sept. 30 belonged to financial experts, economists, academics, investors and lawyers who had posted about the investment fund investigation.
The accounts had a combined following of about 2.65 million and included those of financial expert İris Cibre, technical analyst İbrahim Babadağı, stock market investor Gürdal Hançer, academic Rıdvan Özturgut, lawyer Tugay Bek and author Hüseyin Edemir.
Many of the decisions cited broad grounds such as “national security and public order.” Publicly available records, however, did not provide a detailed explanation of which specific content on each account was deemed to fall within those categories.
X complied with most of the decisions by making the accounts inaccessible in Turkey. No public explanation from the platform detailing the grounds for those decisions was available.
In addition to MLSA, the joint statement on the T24 decision was signed by the Turkey branch of the European Journalists Association, the Press Council, DİSK Basın-İş, the Contemporary Journalists Association, the Dicle Fırat Journalists Association, the Diplomacy Correspondents Association, the Economic Correspondents Association, the Journalists Association, the İzmir Journalists Association, KESK Haber-Sen, the Journalists’ Union of Turkey and the International Press Institute.
