X hid nearly 500 accounts in Turkey in one week, censorship monitor EngelliWeb says

X has hidden nearly 500 accounts from users in Turkey over the past week, according to a Bloomberg report published on Tuesday. The figure comes from EngelliWeb, a censorship monitoring project run by the Turkish rights group İFÖD, and most of the affected accounts belong to reporters, economists and academics.

EngelliWeb says the restrictions were applied under court orders that cite national security and public order. X itself has given no reason for withholding the accounts.

A fund-market crisis behind the blocks

Many of the accounts had been discussing a crisis in Turkey's investment fund market. At the start of this month the country's market regulator ordered seven fund companies to close 131 funds, after some of them failed to repay investors who had asked for their money back. Anger over the government's handling of the episode spread quickly online.

On 22 September, İFÖD counted 194 blocked accounts tied to investigations into posts about the financial markets. Among them were the economists Uğur Gürses and Bilge Yılmaz and the journalist Naz Yavuzarslan. Prosecutors argued that such posts could frighten investors.

A widening list

On 26 September at least 80 more accounts were added, including the news site Kısa Dalga. On Monday, EngelliWeb recorded at least 150 further restrictions, among them two reporters from the daily BirGün and a court reporter from the ANKA news agency.

The same treatment reached the people documenting it: EngelliWeb says X also hid the account of Yaman Akdeniz, a law professor who co-founded İFÖD and runs the monitoring project. "I have been fighting Internet censorship for over 30 years and X has notified me without providing the details, or a copy of the blocking decision, or the reasons," he wrote on X.

The legal mechanism

The courts acted under Article 8/A of Turkey's internet law, which allows access to be suspended first and approved by a judge afterwards. Because the blocks are applied at country level, the accounts stay visible everywhere except Turkey.

The measure is part of a broader campaign: since 9 September hundreds of accounts have been disabled in Turkey, starting with LGBTQ+ groups and moving on to women's groups, rights organisations and news agencies.

X has pushed back before. In March 2025 it called orders to block more than 700 accounts unlawful, and in August it said it would challenge the ban on the campaign account of Ekrem İmamoğlu, the jailed Istanbul mayor, while still complying with the order.