Turkey continues to block Instagram for a second day, after a senior Turkish official accused the U.S. platform of censoring posts.
Turkish Transport and Infrastructure Minister Abdulkadir Uraloğlu said on Friday, "Our country has values and sensitivities. Despite our warnings, they did not take criminal content into consideration. We imposed a ban on access (to the site). When they respect our laws, the ban will be lifted."
On his part, the head of the Turkish presidency's communications department Fahrettin Altun strongly criticized the platform on Wednesday, stressing that it "prevents people from posting messages of condolences" for the head of the political bureau of the Hamas movement Ismail Haniyeh.
Altun wrote on X, "This is a clear and obvious attempt at censorship."
The opposition Republican People's Party (social democratic) and the Good Party (nationalist), as well as the Ankara Bar Association, took legal action on Friday evening to lift the ban on the site.
Haniyeh had been living in Turkey for long periods before October 7, the date of the Hamas attack in southern Israel.
Instagram has more than 50 million members in Turkey, out of a population of 85 million, according to Turkish media.
The Turkish authorities have temporarily blocked certain social media sites in recent years, such as Facebook and Twitter (the former name of X platform), often after attacks.
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