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X blocks access to more than 100 journalist, activist accounts in Turkey

Social media platform X has blocked access to over 100 accounts belonging to Turkish journalists, activists and media organizations run by journalists living in exile, in another example of its compliance with censorship requests from the Turkish government.

Among the blocked accounts are those that belong to exiled journalists Cevheri Güven, Sevinç Özarslan, Adem Yavuz Arslan, Emre Uslu, Van Dündar and Amberin Zaman, who are known for their critical reporting on the Turkish government, as well as the X account of the Bold Medya news website, former national footballer Hakan Şükür and Cemre Birand, a human rights activist and widow of the late journalist Mehmet Ali Birand. These added to the hundreds of accounts that X had already censored at the request of the Turkish government in the past, with Twitter even being banned in the country in 2014 for refusing to comply with Erdoğan’s take-down orders. Thousands of people face investigation, are prosecuted and sentenced to prison in Turkey for expressing views disliked by the government on social media platforms.

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