ALBAWABA - Following Turkey's banning of Instagram in the country last week, President Tayyip Erdogan harshly criticized social media firms on Monday, arguing they aimed to “muzzle the Palestinian people's voices,” as reported by Reuters.
Instagram access in Turkey was restricted by the Information and Communication Technologies Authority last week, after Fahrettin Altun, the director of communications for the Turkish president, criticized the Meta-owned platform, according to Al Jazeera, for what he described as their decision to ban posts expressing condolences for Israeli assassination of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh.
The remarks made by the Turkish president coincided with ongoing conversations between Turkish authorities and Instagram representatives on the restoration of access to millions of Turkish users.
“We are facing a digital fascism that has no tolerance for even the photographs of Palestinian martyrs and bans them immediately,” Erdogan said, adding “they are resorting to every means to hide Israel's cruelty and muzzle the Palestinian people's voices. Especially social media companies have literally become militants.”
From Meta’s side, a spokesperson for the company stated, according to Reuters, that “as a result of the block to Instagram in Türkiye, millions of people are being deprived of their everyday ways of connecting with family and friends, and businesses are no longer able to reach their customers in the same way,” adding that the company will “continue to do everything we can to restore our services.”
“We have tried to establish a line of dialogue through our relevant institutions. However, we have not yet been able to achieve the desired cooperation,” Erdogan noted.
Turkey has criticized what it terms the West's "unconditional support for Israel," demanded an immediate ceasefire and denounced Israel's aggression on Gaza, which claimed the lives of 39,623 Palestinians so far while injuring 91,469.
