Türkiye’s Information Technologies and Communication Authority (BTK), which is directly affiliated with the Presidency imposed an access ban on Instagram on August 2, stirring debate on Türkiye’s freedom of expression record.

We thought China was the last country where we weren’t embarrassed about freedom of expression, but thanks to the Instagram ban, we’ve learned we’ve managed to fall behind even them, according to Maruf Buzcugil’s article in Ekonomim newspaper. Instagram is also banned in China, but the Communist Party government turns a blind eye to university students using VPNs to connect to the outside world.

Our colleague, who recently returned from China with a group of journalists, wrote, “We couldn’t explain to these young officials, who wanted to add us to their social media accounts, that we couldn’t access our own Instagram accounts due to the ban in our country. Because Türkiye had been taught to them as a country with freedom of thought, where social media accounts can be freely accessed.”

It’s easy to say people in Türkiye can just use VPNs, but there’s a list of banned VPNs in Türkiye. Even from China’s perspective, Türkiye has begun to be seen as a country of bans. Recently, the Constitutional Court announced that the Disinformation Center’s operations under the Presidential Decree were unconstitutional, violating both freedom of expression and press freedom. The increasingly oppressive nature of restrictions and bans has begun to be discussed in terms of their negative impact on the economy.

Even before this Instagram ban, news was circulating about the negative effects of access restrictions, including VPNs, on production and trade. The Electronic Commerce Operators Association claims this ban costs the economy 1.9 billion liras per day.

IT entrepreneur Erdem Erkul pointed out another danger on his X account.

“While trying to access Instagram, all data traffic is flowing through VPNs. I see this as a national security risk, especially for banking and other sectors,” he posted.

The ASAL research company attempted to predict the potential political impact of the Instagram ban.

According to company executive Adem........

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