A court in Ankara on Thursday again blocked access to Eksi Sozluk, a popular domestic social media platform.
“We do not have information on details and we are trying to get information from officials,” Eksi Sozluk said in a statement on X (Twitter).
EngelliWeb, a Turkish internet freedoms watchdog, reported that Eksi Sozluk was censored on the grounds of “protecting national security and public order”.
Thursday’s access ban was the third imposed on Eksi Sozluk. In February, after devasting eartquakes hit Turkey, the platform was blocked after officials accused it of not deleting “wrong and slanderous content”.
The February 6 quake disaster devastated Turkey’s south and southeastern provinces, killing more than 55,000 people and leaving millions without homes.
Critics say President Recep Tayyip Erdogan used allegedly “slanderous” comments on the handling of the disaster to silence criticism of his government’s poor management of the crisis.
Following this ban, Eksi Sozluk started to use a new web address, eksisozluk2023.com. This address was also blocked by a court order – one day before important elections on May 14.
Eksisozluk then started to operate with eksisozluk1923.com, but this address was also blocked on Thursday. Eksisozluk has announced that it will continue operating with a new address: eksisozluk1999.com.
Eksi Sozluk is a collaborative hypertext dictionary working similarly to Reddit and is one of the most popular Turkish social media platforms and most-visited websites since 1999.
Under Erdogan’s rule, Turkey has previously blocked many social media platforms, including YouTube, Wikipedia, Twitter and TikTok, using draconian laws and regulations.
Source : BalkanInsight
