ISTANBUL, Aug 2, 2024 (BSS/AFP) - Turkey on Friday blocked access to the
Instagram social media network, the national communications authority said
without explanation, following censorship accusations against the US company
by a high-ranking Turkish official.

The BTK communications authority said in a post on its website that
"instagram.com has been blocked by a decision on the date of 02/08/2024",
without adding further details.

Many users living in Turkey complained on the X platform that they could not
refresh their Instagram feed, an issue verified by AFP journalists.

The Turkish presidency's communications director Fahrettin Altun on Wednesday
hit out at Meta-owned Instagram, accusing the platform of "impeding people
from publishing messages of condolence for the martyr Haniyeh".

Ismail Haniyeh, the political chief of the armed Palestinian Islamist group
Hamas and a close ally of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, was killed
in Tehran on Wednesday in an attack blamed on Israel.

"This is a very clear and obvious attempt at censure," Altun said on X.

According to Turkish media, there are more than 50 million users signed up to
Instagram in Turkey, out of a population of 85 million.

The decision sparked mockery on other social media networks such as X.

A meme showing a congested metro station with the tagline: "X when Turks wake
up to find that Instagram is blocked", began trending on the platform.

"Instagram is blocked in Turkey, life is over", wrote user "CringeOfMaster"
alongside a picture of a grieving man.

Others mockingly asked Instagram users where they could see their doctored
images now.

This is not the first time that Turkish authorities have blocked access to
social media sites.

Wikipedia was blocked between April 2017 and January 2020 over two articles
that alleged a link between the presidency and extremism.

That caused shock in a country where Erdogan's government is often accused of
attacking civil freedoms due to the amount of online information that became
inaccessible.

In April, Facebook owner Meta suspended its Threads social network in Turkey
following a decision by authorities there to prevent it from sharing
information with Instagram.