{"id":1703,"date":"2026-10-02T13:37:32","date_gmt":"2026-10-02T10:37:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ifade.org.tr\/en\/?page_id=1703"},"modified":"2026-10-02T13:37:33","modified_gmt":"2026-10-02T10:37:33","slug":"censorship-wave-becomes-a-tsunami-in-september-at-least-1270-x-accounts-blocked-in-one-month-now-engelliweb-is-targeted","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/ifade.org.tr\/en\/press-releases-announcements\/censorship-wave-becomes-a-tsunami-in-september-at-least-1270-x-accounts-blocked-in-one-month-now-engelliweb-is-targeted\/","title":{"rendered":"Censorship Wave Becomes a Tsunami in September: At Least 1,270 X Accounts Blocked in One Month, Now EngelliWeb Is Targeted"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>2 October 2026<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The Freedom of Expression Association (\u0130F\u00d6D) learned, while preparing this statement, that <strong>the X account of EngelliWeb<\/strong> (<em><a href=\"https:\/\/x.com\/engelliweb\">@engelliweb<\/a><\/em>), which has documented Internet censorship in T\u00fcrkiye since 2008, <strong>has itself been blocked from access<\/strong> and <strong>country withheld in T\u00fcrkiye by X<\/strong>. According to the notification sent by X on 1 October 2026 at 17:14, the blocking is based on a decision issued under Article 8\/A of Law No. 5651 and transmitted to X by the Cyber Security Presidency (\u201cSGB\u201d). The decision itself has not been shared with us. Numerous decisions targeting EngelliWeb\u2019s posts had previously been forwarded to \u0130F\u00d6D. This time, the account through which we record censorship has itself been targeted.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Our EngelliWeb monitoring shows that the blocking of social media accounts, which intensified throughout the year, reached unprecedented levels in September. Between 1 and 30 September 2026 alone, <strong>at least 1,270 X accounts were blocked from access<\/strong> under Articles 8 and 8\/A of Law No. 5651, and <strong>90%<\/strong> of these accounts were <strong>country withheld in T\u00fcrkiye by X<\/strong>. As documented in our EngelliWeb 2025 report, the number of X accounts blocked under Article 8\/A in the whole of 2025, a year defined by the 19 March process, was 995. The number of accounts blocked in a single month has thus surpassed the total for last year, which we described as a \u201c<strong>digital lockdown<\/strong>\u201d. 941 of the blockings took place in the second half of the month.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The blocking spread across a very broad spectrum, from journalists to news outlets, from LGBTIQ+ organisations and rights defenders to women\u2019s organisations, from human rights organisations to academics and economists, and to diverse political and religious circles. While the accounts of LGBTIQ+ organisations, rights defenders and activists were targeted in operations dubbed \u201cAilem G\u00fcvende\u201d (\u201cMy Family Is Safe\u201d), the accounts of many adult content creators were blocked on grounds of \u201cobscenity\u201d. The blocking also reached accounts that posted about the fund crisis and the investigation into the murder of Narin G\u00fcran. Other accounts were blocked over alleged \u201cdisinformation\u201d, \u201cnational security\u201d, \u201cmanipulation\u201d and Article 217\/A of the Turkish Penal Code, as well as Israeli propaganda, \u201cFET\u00d6 affiliation\u201d, the Tevhid circle, and the Furkan Movement and Alihan Kuri\u015f investigations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The 1,227 accounts for which follower data was available have a combined following of more than 35 million. Of these, 362 had more than 10,000 followers, 70 more than 100,000 and 10 more than 500,000.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The <strong>country withheld accounts<\/strong> include those of journalists Erk Acarer, Naz Yavuzarslan, Canan Kaya, Meral Dany\u0131ld\u0131z, \u00d6zlem Akarsu \u00c7elik, F\u0131rat F\u0131st\u0131k and \u0130rem Af\u015fin; Yaman Akdeniz, one of the founders of the Freedom of Expression Association; and the news outlets K\u0131sa Dalga, soL Haber, Mezopotamya Ajans\u0131, JinNews, Velvele and Kaos GL Haber. The accounts of economists Prof. Dr. Veysel Ulusoy, \u0130nan Mutlu and Emre \u015eirin met the same fate. The list also includes the Kaos GL Association, Amnesty International T\u00fcrkiye, the Media and Law Studies Association (MLSA), Academics for Peace, the We Will Stop Femicide Platform, the Federation of Women Associations of T\u00fcrkiye, the Women\u2019s Coalition, the Psychiatric Association of T\u00fcrkiye, the Ali \u0130smail Korkmaz Foundation (AL\u0130KEV), the LGBTI+ Bureau of the Workers\u2019 Party of T\u00fcrkiye (T\u0130P) and Umut-Sen, as well as Ba\u015faran Aksu, Levent Pi\u015fkin and author Haluk Hepkon.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>September Decisions: Unreasoned, Wholesale and Invisible<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The decisions are neither made public nor notified to account holders. From the nine September decisions and one request letter we obtained, we could identify the underlying decision for only 115 of the 1,270 accounts. <strong>The legal basis for the remaining 1,155 accounts is unknown<\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">By decision no 2026\/9559 of 12.09.2026, issued within investigation no 2026\/143015 of the Istanbul Chief Public Prosecutor\u2019s Office, the Istanbul 7<sup>th<\/sup> Criminal Judgeship of Peace blocked access to the websites and social media accounts of 73 organisations and individuals, including Kaos GL, SPoD, Pembe Hayat, Lambdaistanbul, Pride Week committees and university LGBTIQ+ groups, a total of 179 addresses. Beyond quoting the law and a single template sentence, the decision contains no reasoning. In Mersin, upon a direct application by the Mersin Provincial Directorate of Security, the Mersin 3<sup>rd<\/sup> Criminal Judgeship of Peace, by decision no 2026\/9999 of 14.09.2026, blocked access to \u201call pages\u201d of accounts including those of Evrensel, the T\u0130P LGBTI+ Bureau, Academics for Peace, Amnesty International T\u00fcrkiye, Umut-Sen and AL\u0130KEV. In an \u201cobscenity\u201d investigation by the Bak\u0131rk\u00f6y Chief Public Prosecutor\u2019s Office under Article 226\/2 of the Turkish Penal Code, Kaos GL Haber was targeted by decision no 2026\/9112 of 13.09.2026 of the Bak\u0131rk\u00f6y 4<sup>th<\/sup> Criminal Judgeship of Peace, and the Psychiatric Association of T\u00fcrkiye and the Kaos GL Association by the Prosecutor\u2019s Office\u2019s second request of 16.09.2026.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">By decision no 2026\/8894 of 29.09.2026, issued within the same investigation no 2026\/143015 of the Istanbul Chief Public Prosecutor\u2019s Office, the Istanbul 1st Criminal Judgeship of Peace blocked access to the entire T24 website and its X account, on the grounds that the site had published \u201c118 so-called news items in approximately one year\u201d and that these publications were \u201caimed at weakening the Turkish family structure\u201d. The wholesale blocking of a national news website on account of 118 items disregards the principles of URL-based blocking and proportionality.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Conclusion and Our Call<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">In <em>Art\u0131 Media GmbH<\/em> ([Plenary], no. 2019\/40078, 14.09.2023), the Constitutional Court found that Article 8\/A provides no safeguards against arbitrary interference and that the violation stems directly from the law itself. September demonstrates that this structural problem has turned into a regime of mass censorship. \u0130F\u00d6D calls on the criminal judgeships of peace to refer Article 8\/A to the Constitutional Court under Article 152 of the Constitution when examining objections. We also call for the immediate lifting of the blocking imposed on LGBTIQ+ organisations, rights defenders, professional associations and T24 under the \u201cAilem G\u00fcvende\u201d operations, an end to the wholesale blocking of entire accounts and websites, and the notification and publication of all decisions with their reasoning. The decision concerning the EngelliWeb account must be disclosed immediately and the blocking lifted. Once we obtain the decision, we will object and seek the referral of Article 8\/A to the Constitutional Court.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>2 October 2026 The Freedom of Expression Association (\u0130F\u00d6D) learned, while preparing this statement, that the X account of EngelliWeb (@engelliweb), which has documented Internet censorship in T\u00fcrkiye since 2008, has itself been blocked from access and country withheld in T\u00fcrkiye by X. According to the notification sent by X on 1 October 2026 at [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":87,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-1703","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ifade.org.tr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1703","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ifade.org.tr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ifade.org.tr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ifade.org.tr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ifade.org.tr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1703"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/ifade.org.tr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1703\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1704,"href":"https:\/\/ifade.org.tr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1703\/revisions\/1704"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ifade.org.tr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/87"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ifade.org.tr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1703"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}