Turkey unblocks Instagram after talks to address its concerns about crime and censorship
The country blocked access to the app on August 2.
Turkey has restored access to Instagram after the social media site agreed to meet the country’s demands around censorship and crime-related content, Bloomberg reports. Transport Minister Abdulkadir Uraloglu announced the agreement in a post on X. Instagram was blocked for a little over a week; users in the country abruptly lost access on August 2, but no official explanation for the decision was provided at the time.
However, the block came after Turkey’s head of communications, Fahrettin Altun, accused the platform of censoring posts that expressed condolences for Ismail Haniyeh, a Hamas leader who was recently killed. In the post on Saturday, Uraloglu cited concerns over content relating to catalog crimes — which include murder, sexual assault, drug trafficking and torture, according to Reuters — and censorship imposed on Instagram users. NetBlocks, which first reported that Instagram had been blocked in Turkey earlier this month, confirmed on Saturday that access had begun to return.
