The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has urged the administrators of X not to comply with a recent order by a Turkish court to block accounts belonging to several journalists and media outlets.
According to CPJ, on August 20 a criminal court in the northeastern city of Gümüşhane ordered 69 X accounts, including those of at least three journalists and a media outlet, to be blocked from access inside Turkey.
The committee said the court ruling, which was issued in response to a request by the local military police to stop “terrorist organization propaganda,” did not specify the nature of the alleged propaganda.
The list included the accounts of politicians, activists and individuals from various countries, CPJ said, adding that some were inaccessible inside Turkey, while others were suspended or deleted, as of August 27.
The accounts of Amberin Zaman, chief correspondent for the independent Al Monitor news website; Deniz Tekin, a correspondent for the local media freedom group MLSA in the southeastern city of Diyarbakır; and the pro-Kurdish Yeni Yaşam newspaper were accessible despite being included on the court list, while the account of Öznur Değer, a reporter for the pro-Kurdish JİNNEWS, was inaccessible, CPJ noted.
“Turkish authorities continue to practice the ‘virtual patrolling’ and censorship of social media users under the false guise of national security,” said Gulnoza Said, CPJ’s Europe and Central Asia program coordinator, in New York.
“The request to block access to multiple X accounts, including those of journalists and media, will have a negative effect on press freedom in Turkey, where media have already worked under constant government restraints,” she added.
Turkey’s Constitutional Court canceled the Turkish police’s authority for “virtual patrolling” in 2020 due to the right to privacy and the protection of personal data. However, Turkish security forces continue the practice.
The administration of President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has been accused of suppressing freedom of expression and information, with Turkey ranking among the “not free” countries in terms of internet freedom, in the 2023 Freedom on the Net report published last October by the US-based nonprofit Freedom House.
Turkey, which has been suffering from a poor record of freedom of the press for years, ranks 158th among 180 countries in RSF’s World Press Freedom Index published on May 3 on the occasion of World Press Freedom Day.
