Turkish news portal blocked: Türkiye is increasingly left behind

In Turkey, the most important online news portal T24 has been blocked. The Ministry of Justice claimed that the independent online medium T24 was carrying out LGBT propaganda as a reason for closing the portal.

T24, which has previously sent dozens of new messages every day, reportedly sent 118 pieces of LGBTQI propaganda content last year. This was discovered as part of the campaign against people, clubs and institutions that belong to the LGBTQI community.

Hundreds of people have been arrested in recent weeks on charges of spreading obscene content or propaganda for LGBTQI issues. Since homosexuality itself is not forbidden, the Turkish government is trying to unsettle the LGBTQI community and banish it from the public as part of its so-called “My Family is Safe” campaign.

This is also used as an excuse to block the X accounts of many critical journalists and to criminalize the critical public in Turkey even further than is already the case.

The most radical step is the closure of T24. The online portal was founded in 2009 when more and more newspapers were banned or transferred to the government camp through a change of ownership. Journalists critical of the government lost their jobs.

The antidote to this was to set up our own media on the Internet, the production and distribution of which is not as expensive as printed newspapers. T24 was one of the most successful of these start-ups.

Around 2 million readers looked at T24's website or X-account every day. Editor-in-chief Gökçer Tahincioğlu said the suspension was the result of a “smear campaign.” However, Justice Minister Akın Gürlek hardly needs a smear campaign to take action against critics of the government. His job, for which President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan appointed him justice minister in February of this year, consists precisely of pursuing any opposition.

In particular, the former CHP and current Yeni Parti is the object of persecution by the former Istanbul Prosecutor General and current Justice Minister Gürlek. This also includes all journalists who could possibly support the opposition. According to “Engelliweb”, an initiative to monitor internet censorship, the X accounts of at least 147 other journalists were blocked at the same time as T24 was blocked.

Özgür Özel, head of the Yeni Parti and also opposition leader in parliament, explained: "In a country whose constitution states that the press is free, the doors of media outlets that provide millions of people with news every day are closed for pretextual reasons. These blocks must be lifted immediately."

Turkey is ranked 163rd out of 180 countries on Reporters Without Borders' press freedom list.