From Malay Mail · · 1m 20s
Turkiye pulls the plug on LGBTQ voices on X
More than a dozen Turkish LGBTQ groups vanished from X inside the country, and it is not the first sweep.
In brief
More than a dozen Turkish LGBTQ groups vanished from X inside the country, and it is not the first sweep. Blocking accounts at the platform level lets a government erase a movement from public view without ever going to court over it. Originally reported by Malay Mail.
A dozen accounts go dark
Accounts belonging to more than a dozen Turkish LGBTQ organisations were blocked on X at the request of Turkish authorities, the Ifod media watchdog said on Saturday.
Who got silenced
The blocked list includes Kaos GL, one of Turkiye's oldest LGBTQ rights groups, and the lawyer Levent Piskin.
Invisible without a VPN
AFP checked on Saturday and found the accounts, followed by tens of thousands of people, unreachable inside Turkiye unless you route around the block with a VPN.
The president set the tone
Officials framed the move as defending traditional family values. Erdogan has called the LGBTQ community a "deviant movement" of "perverts".
“a "deviant movement" of "perverts"”
June was the rehearsal
Three months earlier, Turkiye blocked around 40 X accounts tied to feminist or LGBTQ groups. Saturday's sweep extends the same playbook.
X has folded before
Last year the platform agreed to block over 700 accounts critical of the government, during protests over the arrest of Istanbul mayor Ekrem Imamoglu.
The main idea
Blocking accounts at the platform level lets a government erase a movement from public view without ever going to court over it.
