Instagram ban continues in Turkey amid discussions with parent company and legal challenge

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said authorities trying to establish a dialogue through official institutions

A woman holds a phone showing the Instagram logo, in Istanbul, Turkey, where a nationwide ban on the app continued for a fifth day on Tuesday. EPA

Turkey’s block on Instagram extended into its fifth day on Tuesday, as authorities engaged in discussions with the app's parent company amid internal legal proceedings regarding the ban.

Government officials and Meta met on Monday, an official from the Ministry of Transport and Infrastructure told The National, in an attempt to find an acceptable agreement and reverse the ban. However, the Turkish party was not satisfied with the outcome.

The country banned the social networking app over the weekend in an apparent protest at restrictions on content commemorating Hamas political leader Ismail Haniyeh, who was killed in a suspected Israeli attack in Tehran last week.

“We have tried to establish a dialogue line through our relevant institutions. However, we have not yet established the desired co-operation in its full sense,” Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan told legislators on Monday.

In the meantime, the Media and Law Studies Association, a non-profit organisation promoting freedom of speech in Turkey, said it had filed a lawsuit against the country's Information and Communication Technologies Authority, which implemented the ban.

Veysel Ok, the association's co-director, said the decision to ban Instagram infringed on the rights of 57 million users in Turkey, disrupted daily commerce worth 2 billion Turkish lira ($60 million), and resulted in a daily VAT loss of 400 million lira.

Instagram is a highly popular platform in Turkey and as well as personal and business users, parties from across the political spectrum promote their activities on the app.

“Turkish society was taken aback by this censorship decision because they did not find the government's reasons convincing,” Mr Ok told The National. “Not only has the freedom of expression of millions of people been restricted, but countless individuals who trade on Instagram have also been left jobless.”

Many people in the country have reported using virtual private networks (VPNs) to circumvent the ban – a step commonly taken by users in neighbouring Iran, where Instagram has been banned for years.

Mr Erdogan has vocally backed Hamas since it attacked Israel on October 7 last year, and Turkey has banned trade with Israel over its war in Gaza in response to the attacks.

Last week, thousands of people marched in Istanbul to protest over Mr Haniyeh's assassination and to express anger at the continuing Israeli military operation.

The Turkish President accused social media companies of promoting Israeli narratives and blocking pro-Palestinian content, and also criticised them for failing to limit posts linked to organisations that Turkey sees as terrorists, such as the Kurdish separatist militants, the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK).

“We are against a digital fascism that cannot even tolerate the photos of Palestinian martyrs and prohibits them at the moment, and which is also a digital fascism that is marketed as freedom,” Mr Erdogan said on Monday.

The lack of popular support for the Instagram ban leads lawyers to believe that it will eventually be reversed, Mr Ok said.

“I think the Turkish government will find a way to reach a compromise because they did not receive societal support for this decision.”

Turkey has blocked social media sites in the past and some news websites are also banned. Access to Twitter was temporarily blocked following the earthquakes iin the south-east of the country in February last year, in which more than 50,000 people were killed.