Turkey continues to block the Instagram application on Sunday for the third consecutive day, after accusations of censoring posts mourning the head of Hamas' political bureau Ismail Haniya following his assassination in Tehran. The Turkish Information and Communication Technologies Authority announced the decision on its website on Friday. An official connected the decision to rules that allow for the banning of "criminal content," without providing further details.
Turkish Minister of Transport and Infrastructure Abdulkadir Uraloglu stated on Friday, "Our country has values and sensitivities. Despite our warnings, they did not take into account the criminal content. We imposed a ban on accessing the site. When they respect our laws, the ban will be lifted."
For his part, the head of communications at the Turkish presidency, Fahrettin Altun, strongly criticized the platform on Wednesday, asserting that it "prevents people from expressing condolences" for Ismail Haniya, who was buried on Friday in Qatar after being killed on Wednesday by a strike in Tehran, which Iran attributed to Israel. Altun wrote on X: "This is a clear and blatant attempt at censorship."
Opposition parties "Republican People's Party" (social-democratic) and the "Good Party" (nationalist), along with the Ankara Bar Association, took legal action on Friday evening to overturn the site access ban. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan announced on Friday a national mourning day for Haniya, coinciding with his burial in Qatar.
Iran and the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas) accused Israel of being behind the assassination in Tehran, which occurred hours after Haniya attended the swearing-in of the new President of the Republic Masoud Bezhaskian before the Shura Council. Instagram has more than fifty million users in Turkey, which has a population of 85 million, according to Turkish media. Turkish authorities have previously temporarily blocked certain social media sites, such as Facebook and Twitter (the former name of X), often following attacks.
