Turkey has blocked access to Instagram following Erdogan administration complaints that the social media platform is actively preventing the posting of condolences on the death of Ismail Haniyeh, following the assassination in Tehran of the political leader of Palestinian militant group Hamas.

"This is censorship, pure and simple," Fahrettin Altun, the communications director of the Turkish presidency, said on X on July 31. Instagram, he added, had not pointed to any policy violations that prompted its action.

Instagram and Meta Platforms Inc were yet to respond to the ban and Altun’s comments.

Turkey’s infotech regulator, the Information and Communication Technologies Authority, announced the blocking of Instagram in the country of 85mn on August 2, but did not state a reason for the action or indicate how long it would last. The move also left the platform's mobile app inaccessible.

Ankara is a fierce critic of Israel’s war in Gaza. It does not see Hamas as a terror organisation and has a track record of allowing the group’s political wing to operate in Turkey.

Three days prior to the assassination of Haniyeh, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan threatened Israel with possible military action by Turkey over the Gaza conflict situation. Israel responded by telling Erdogan to recall the plight of executed former Iraq strongman Saddam Hussein. Since Haniyeh perished, Erdogan has not followed up on his warnings of a military intervention, with the Middle East on tenterhooks over the potential for a wider regional war.

Erdogan declared August 2 a national day of mourning over the July 31 death of Haniyeh, with flags to be flown at half-mast, including at diplomatic missions abroad.

The lowering of the Turkish flat at Ankara’s embassy in Tel Aviv prompted Israel—widely suspected of having conducted the killing of Haniyeh—to summon the Turkish ambassador for a reprimand. 

Turkey keeps an extremely tight grip on social media platforms, and is often itself accused of raw censorship by rights defenders. Its internet regulator has the power to squeeze bandwidth in response to a wide range of claimed regulatory infringements. Foreign social media organisations must by law have local representatives.