Documents seen by the Financial Times show that Turkey’s Information Technologies and Communications Authority (BTK) told internet service providers a month ago to curtail access to more than a dozen popular virtual private network services.
At the same time, social media site X said this week it had “taken action” against 15 posts as a result of a court order that also targeted several of the group’s rivals. X said it would have faced a ban in Turkey had it not complied with the order.
The latest interventions against online content, which come ahead of local elections in March, have fuelled concern that the government is further stifling independent sources of news and information in the country of 85mn people. Human rights groups and Turkey’s western allies say they fear that Erdoğan, Turkey’s leader for the past two decades, is backsliding on democratic norms.
“Widespread VPN blocks only take place in the most authoritarian of regimes,” said Andy Yen, chief executive of Proton VPN, one of the services that was targeted by Turkey’s internet regulator. “Blocking . . . the use of VPNs in Turkey is a very concerning move for internet freedom and privacy and is a breach of people’s fundamental human rights.”
Yen said that Turkey’s new attempt at restricting access to popular VPNs placed the country on a par with Iran and Russia. He added that sign-ups for Proton VPN had soared around the May 2023 presidential election and following the February earthquake when government censors briefly interfered with access to X.
RHM/PR
