On 30 September 2026, Istanbul's 1st Criminal Judgeship of Peace ordered T24's website and social media accounts blocked. According to Bianet, the court acted on a request from the Istanbul Chief Public Prosecutor's Office. It cited 118 column articles published over the past year as 'LGBTI+ propaganda' and issued a separate removal order for each one. This was not a takedown of a few posts. A court decided that a whole newsroom could be cut off because of a body of reporting and commentary.
The strongest case for the government
The government's argument deserves a fair statement. It says the 'My Family is Safe' operation protects children and family values, and that courts, not ministers, ordered the blocks. Every democracy lets judges remove unlawful content, including child abuse material, incitement to violence and defamation. Turkish officials can say, accurately, that homosexuality is not a crime in Turkey. They can also say that the orders passed through a judicial process rather than an executive decree.
That argument fails on the facts of this case, for three reasons.
What was actually blocked
The 118 items were journalism. Reuters quotes Yıldız Tar, editor-in-chief of Kaos GL, whose articles were among those cited: 'It's not propaganda. It's about basic journalism. It's about reality.' T24 editor Candan Yıldız called the ruling an undermining of 'the foundations of our profession' and a 'digital emergency.' T24 is, in the EFF's words, Turkey's longest-running independent digital news organisation. It had covered the government-backed campaign against gay rights groups, so the blocked material includes coverage of the very operation that produced the order.
The label 'propaganda' is also doing too much work. Turkish law does not make being LGBTQ+ a crime, and the EFF notes that the vagueness of the obscenity offence in Article 226 of the Penal Code is part of the problem. When a category is undefined, courts decide what falls inside it, and prosecutors can stretch it to cover reporting.
The operation behind the order
The order did not come alone. According to the Council of Europe's Human Rights Commissioner, the Justice Minister announced an operation against 162 individuals, nine associations and 13 businesses across 15 provinces. Bianet reports that the operations began on 12 September, that more than 100 people were detained and that 82 were jailed pending trial. Hundreds of accounts belonging to rights groups, journalists and activists have also been blocked. The EFF says a dozen organisations lost access to their websites and accounts from mid-September, and that over 60 members and activists were detained.
Blocking T24 therefore extends an existing pattern to the press. It is not an isolated moment of overreach. The Commissioner reminded Ankara that the European Court of Human Rights has made clear that mere references to 'family values' or 'protection of children' cannot justify human rights restrictions.
Turkey has lost this argument in Strasbourg before
The legal problem is old. In Ahmet Yıldırım v. Turkey (18 December 2012), a court blocked all of Google Sites to stop one site. The European Court of Human Rights found a violation of Article 10 of the European Convention. It held that the effects had been arbitrary and that judicial review of blocking was insufficient to prevent abuses. It stressed that restricting access to a source of information is compatible with the Convention only within a strict legal framework, and that courts must weigh the interests at stake and ask whether a less far-reaching measure would work. In Cengiz and Others v. Turkey (1 December 2015), the Court again found a violation over the blanket blocking of YouTube. It noted that the law contained no provision allowing domestic courts to impose a blanket block on a platform because of some of its content.
The T24 order has the same problem at a different scale. A site-wide block is imposed because of a set of articles, and the order itself says nothing about whether removing individual pieces would have been enough. The court issued per-article removal orders as well, and the extra step of blocking the outlet's website and accounts looks like the collateral damage Strasbourg has warned about.
Enforcement is patchy, and that is not a defence
Reports differ on how far the order has taken effect. Bianet said T24's website was blocked within hours, while X, which it says implements most Turkish ban orders, had not yet blocked T24's account in Turkey. T24 urged readers to install its mobile app, and Bianet notes that Turkish outlets often get around bans by changing domain names. Partial enforcement shows how porous blocking is as a tool. It does not make the order proportionate. Outlets bear the costs of lost reach and legal uncertainty. Readers who want the journalism have to learn workarounds. Platforms are left to decide whether to comply in a legal environment where non-compliance can mean throttling or fines.
What proportionate policy looks like
A pro-innovation, pro-speech approach does not require governments to tolerate genuinely illegal content. It requires that blocking be a last resort, that it be narrowly targeted and reasoned, and that publishers can challenge it quickly. For Turkey, that points to concrete steps:
- Require judges to explain why a whole-site block is necessary instead of removing specific content.
- Define 'propaganda' and 'obscenity' in statute, so that reporting on LGBTQ+ issues cannot be swept in.
- Give publishers notice before enforcement, since T24 said it had not received official notification.
- Have the Constitutional Court, which has repeatedly found blocking decisions to violate free expression, hear challenges on an expedited basis.
The EU, Turkish journalists' associations and CPJ have criticised the order. Their criticism rests on a standard Turkey has already accepted by being party to the Convention. A court order does not make a block proportionate. Blocking an entire newsroom for a year's worth of columns fails the test Strasbourg set in 2012.