Turkey suddenly reinstated access to Instagram on Saturday after a weeklong nationwide ban. The app’s reinstatement comes only days after a Turkish media official announced plans to ban TikTok.
After banning access to Instagram on August 2, Turkish officials said the app was not complying with Turkish laws. Turkish Transportation and Infrastructure Minister Abdulkadir Uraloğlu said in a post on Saturday on the social media platform X that Instagram had agreed to Turkey’s requests regarding criminal activity and censorship.
A day before Turkey restored access to Instagram, Human Rights Watch decried the ban, saying it violated freedom of expression and harmed small business owners using the platform for their work.
On Thursday, Hüseyin Yayman, the head of the Parliament’s Digital Media Commission, told the Demirören news agency that content on TikTok was not in line with national and universal values.
Yayman, a member of Parliament from President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s Justice and Development Party (AKP), said that TikTok should institute policies that follow Turkey’s moral values and customs.
Speaking to The Media Line before Turkey’s decision to reinstate Instagram access, Ankara-based foreign policy analyst Aydın Sezer said that censorship in Turkey has reached a new level.
The AKP is focusing on online platforms to avoid dealing with issues such as the cost of living and inflation, Sezer said.
Two days before the Instagram ban was put in place, Erdoğan’s head of communications condemned the platform for censoring messages of condolence for assassinated Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh. Instagram had not cited any policy violations when removing the posts, he said.
The Roblox gaming platform was also banned in Turkey.
Erdoğan’s decision to ban the platforms was part of an attempt to win over supporters of the New Welfare Party and the Felicity Party, both of which are Islamist.
“These are all ideologically based approaches and moves that appeal to Islamic groups,” he said.
Gürkan Özturan, Turkey rapporteur for the Washington-based pro-democracy Freedom House, also described political motivations behind the Instagram ban.
In a conversation with The Media Line before the app’s reinstatement, he said that the government was trying to win back control of the media after major losses for the AKP in nationwide local elections in March. The opposition kept control of Istanbul and Ankara in those elections and also won races in traditionally conservative areas.
“This does not have any kind of reference point in the Turkish laws. So it looks like an unlawful action that is done in a rushed manner, and it definitely is a new level of censorship,” Özturan said. He described the ban as “an escalation of the situation.”
Özturan, who is also a monitoring officer for the European Center for Press and Media Freedom, said that Turkish citizens seem to be turning away from pro-government legacy media and seeking out content from digital platforms. In order to maintain its grip on public discourse in this environment, the Turkish government would need to “take stricter steps,” he said.
Turkish TikTok removed 16.5 million pieces of content in 2023 for violating “community guidelines,” the app’s Turkish spokesperson told the Turkish state news agency in June.
Spokesperson Emir Gelen “stated that they will continue to do whatever is necessary to remove the question marks regarding the platform with a sense of responsibility … [and] that they are doing their best to correct the misconceptions and will continue to do so,” the agency reported.
Leading up to a December meeting with TikTok’s Turkish representative, Digital Media Commission head Yayman said that family is more important than freedom and that citizens had requested a TikTok ban, the Duvar news site reported.
A column last October in the pro-government Yeni Şafak daily argued that TikTok should be banned in Turkey, suggesting it could be a tool for cyber espionage and “cultural invasion” from China.
The U.S. has also raised the possibility of banning TikTok, which is owned by a Chinese company, out of concern that Beijing could use the app to collect information on American users.
Turkey has been accused of media censorship for years, especially following the failed 2016 coup attempt when media outlets were shut down and journalists were jailed and put on trial.
Twitter also went down in Turkey during the 2023 earthquake, with critics accusing the government of intentionally blocking the site to prevent speech critical of Erdoğan. The temporary Twitter shutdown caused outrage, especially since the site was used in the first days of the disaster to seek missing relatives and help first responders find people buried in the rubble.