Users in Turkey have faced a massive outage on the most popular social media and messaging apps after the government restricted opposition protests in Istanbul.
Users in Turkey have faced a massive outage on the most popular social media and messaging apps after the government restricted opposition protests in Istanbul.
According to NetBlocks , the restrictions affected Instagram, WhatsApp, YouTube, X, TikTok, Facebook, Telegram, and Signal.
The restrictions on social media were imposed after a court ruling removed the leadership of the main opposition Republican People's Party (CHP) in Istanbul and replaced them with proxies. The CHP called for rallies in response to the ruling, Türkiye Today reported .
"According to monitoring data, access to online platforms such as X, YouTube, Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, WhatsApp has been restricted on many networks in Turkey. This comes amid calls by the main opposition party CHP for rallies after the police blocked its headquarters in Istanbul," NetBlocks said in a statement.
Turkey's "disinformation law," passed in October 2022, allows authorities to limit the bandwidth of social media platforms.
“There is no improvement at the moment. WhatsApp, Twitter/X, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, Telegram and TikTok remain blocked. The blocking is particularly noticeable in Istanbul. This type of blocking was last seen during the arrest of (former Istanbul mayor) Ekrem İmamoğlu,” İşık Mater, research director at NetBlocks, told Türkiye Today.
