Turkey’s Information Technology and Communications Authority blocked access to Instagram. No official reason has been given, but the blocking of the platform may be related to the fact that shortly before that, President Recep Erdogan’s spokesman criticized the social network for “censoring” publications related to the death of Ismail Haniyeh, the political leader of the Islamist group Hamas.
This was reported by Bloomberg and the Turkish service of Deutsche Welle.
On Wednesday, President Erdogan’s communications chief, Fahrettin Altun, accused Instagram of “actively preventing people from expressing condolences over the death of Hamas leader Haniyeh without any reference to any violation of the social network’s policy.”
Instagram was unavailable in Turkey as of Friday morning. Some users report that the platform does not update the content of the publication feed, and the mobile app displays an error message.
