Bilal Erdoğan, the younger son of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, has had courts block access to 237 pieces of online content about him, including news reports and social media posts, the Birgün daily reported.
Two news reports from the Birgün daily are among the online content that has been censored by an İstanbul court.
The reports included criticism about Bilal Erdoğan and claims that one of his companies has not paid any taxes for three years, and that a cafeteria he inaugurated in the southeastern province of Gaziantep before the March local elections that would have been operated by the municipality run by Erdoğan’s Justice and Development Party (AKP) was closed down following the elections despite a large amount of money spent on it.
It is common in Turkey, where online censorship is rampant, for Erdoğan and members of his family and government to have courts block access to news reports and social media posts that include criticism about them.
Earlier this month Turkish authorities blocked access to Roblox, a popular online game platform, shortly after imposing a similar ban on Instagram. The Instagram ban was removed on Saturday, yet the ban on Roblox remains in place.
President Erdoğan’s administration has been accused of suppressing freedom of expression and information, with Turkey ranking among the “not free” countries in terms of internet freedom, in the 2023 Freedom on the Net report published last October by the US-based nonprofit Freedom House.