The authorities in Turkey have blocked over 311,000 websites in 2024, reaching the highest number of blocked websites since similar statistics were kept, according to a report by the Turkish Freedom of Expression Association (İFÖD), quoted by the website “Turkish Minute“, BTA reported.
According to the report of the Agency, which monitors censorship in the online space in Turkey, over 80 percent of the websites were blocked by the Turkish Information and Communications Technology Institute (BTK), and the top places are also occupied by the Turkish Football Federation (TFF), the Turkish Ministry of Health and the Department of Tobacco and Alcohol at the Turkish Ministry of Agriculture. The report also states that, in addition to the many blocked sites, in 2024, Turkish authorities restricted more than 17,000 accounts on the social network X, over 25,000 videos on the YouTube platform, and over 30,000 posts on Facebook and Instagram.
In conclusion, the report reports that in 2024, censorship in the online space in Turkey reached “absurd and unpredictable levels”, citing cases such as the temporary blocking of access to Instagram in August last year and the indefinite blocking of platforms such as Wattpad, Roblox, and Discord.
The number of blocked sites in the country has been growing at an extremely rapid pace in recent years - in 2022, they were nearly 140,000, in 2023 – over 240,000, and over 311,000 last year, notes the Turkish Ministry, citing data from the İFÖD report.
Over the past decade, Turkey has been introducing increasingly strict laws targeting digital platforms. One of them is the 2022 law on disinformation, which criminalizes the spread of "false or misleading information" and provides for up to three years in prison for violators - a measure that government critics see as an attempt to suppress dissent and silence opposition voices, the media outlet also notes.