Access to Instagram was blocked in Turkey on Friday, in the latest example of a clampdown on websites in the country.<\/p>\n
The bar on access was in response to Instagram removing posts from Turkish users expressing condolences over the killing of Hamas’s political leader Ismail Haniyeh<\/strong>, it has been reported.<\/p>\n The Information and Communication Technologies Authority, which regulates the internet in Turkey, announced the block but did not provide a reason.<\/p>\n It comes a few days after an aide to Turkey’s president criticised the Meta-owned social media platform for preventing users in Turkey<\/strong> from posting messages mourning Haniyeh.<\/p>\n There was no immediate comment from Instagram, which has more than 50 million users in Turkey, a nation with a population of 85 million.<\/p>\n Unlike its Western allies, Turkey does not consider Hamas<\/strong> to be a terror organisation.<\/p>\n A strong critic of Israel’s military actions in Gaza, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan<\/strong> has described the group as “liberation fighters”.<\/p>\n Turkey is observing a day of mourning for Haniyeh on Friday, with flags flown at half-mast.<\/p>\n The twin assassinations of Hamas’s Haniyeh and Hezbollah commander Fuad Shukr<\/strong> have sent tensions in the Middle East spiralling, as the war in Gaza<\/strong> continues to kill thousands.<\/p>\n Turkey has a track record of censoring social media and websites. Hundreds of thousands of domains have been blocked since 2022, according to the Freedom of Expression Association, a non-profit organisation.<\/p>\n The video-sharing platform YouTube was also blocked in the country from 2007 to 2010.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Access to Instagram was blocked in Turkey on Friday, in the latest example of a…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":6129,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[24],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6128","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-science"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailywashingtoninsider.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6128","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailywashingtoninsider.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailywashingtoninsider.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailywashingtoninsider.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailywashingtoninsider.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6128"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailywashingtoninsider.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6128\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailywashingtoninsider.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6129"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailywashingtoninsider.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6128"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailywashingtoninsider.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6128"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailywashingtoninsider.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6128"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}