A record month, before the month was over
Turkish authorities issued blocking orders for at least 1,270 X accounts in September 2026, according to Deutsche Welle Turkish citing the Freedom of Expression Association's (İFÖD) EngelliWeb project. That is more than the 995 accounts blocked in all of 2025, and X withheld 1,139 of them in Turkey. EngelliWeb's own X account was reportedly blocked on October 1, so the monitor that documents the blocks has been blocked as well.
The pace was visible as it happened. The Next Web reported that nearly 500 accounts were withheld in about a week, in tranches of 194, more than 80 and more than 150. Bianet's running tally on September 30 named journalists, outlets such as BirGün and Evrensel, Amnesty International Turkey, Academics for Peace, and women's and LGBTI+ groups including Mor Çatı, Lambdaistanbul and SPoD. Many of the affected accounts had discussed a crisis in Turkey's investment-fund market. The Next Web reports that the market regulator instructed seven fund companies to close 131 funds.
The strongest case for the power
The government's argument deserves a fair statement. Some online content does threaten security. Examples are operational details of an attack, incitement to violence, and coordinated disinformation during a crisis. Courts are slow, and harm can spread within minutes. Article 8/A of Law No. 5651 exists for that situation. It lets the executive act first and seek judicial approval afterwards, but only where "delay would be prejudicial". Many democracies keep similar emergency takedown powers for terrorism content and child safety.
Why the design fails the test it sets itself
The mechanics are the problem. According to İFÖD's EngelliWeb 2025 report, Article 8/A was added on March 27, 2015. The President of the telecommunications regulator, BTK, decides on requests from the Presidency or ministries, and the order must be carried out within four hours. A criminal judgeship of peace then has 48 hours to approve it. An emergency mechanism like this assumes the emergency is rare. The data says otherwise:
- İFÖD has identified 1,786 Article 8/A decisions since 2015. They peaked at 471 in 2022 and fell to 71 in 2024.
- In 2025, 179 decisions from 78 different judgeships blocked more than 6,300 addresses.
- Whole-account X blocks rose from 20 in 2024 to 995 in 2025.
September 2026 alone then exceeded the whole of 2025. A power meant for urgent cases now processes accounts in bulk.
The same İFÖD report says judges systematically ignore Constitutional Court precedent that requires a "prima facie violation" assessment. It also says the blocks follow template decisions without individualised review of the content. If that is accurate, the 48-hour judicial check is a formality, and nobody is weighing proportionality at the point where it matters.
The targets do not look like a security threat
The pattern of targets is hard to square with the stated grounds. Economists, an academic, reporters and women's organisations are not natural subjects of an urgent national-security order. The common thread in the reporting is that they discussed an embarrassing economic episode, the fund crisis. Financial journalism is a public good. Markets need accurate information to price risk, and silencing the people who explain a fund closure does not protect savers. It only delays their access to information.
Blocking the monitor adds a second harm. Accountability for this regime depends on public records, and EngelliWeb is where most of that record lives. İFÖD's co-founder Yaman Akdeniz, himself reportedly among those blocked, told The Next Web that X had notified him without giving details.
The platform's role
X deserves scrutiny as well. The Next Web notes that in March 2025 the company called orders to block over 700 accounts unlawful. Yet it withheld 1,139 accounts in September 2026, and by the same report it did not explain its reasoning. Platforms face a hard choice, because non-compliance can bring throttling, fines or legal liability for local staff. But a company that publicly contests unlawful orders in one month and silently complies in the next gives users no way of knowing which policy applies. Transparent notices that name the legal basis and the issuing authority are the minimum.
What proportionate reform would look like
None of this requires abolishing emergency powers. Four changes would restore the original design:
- Narrow the trigger. Limit 8/A to identified, specific content, with a written explanation of why delay is prejudicial, and prohibit blocking an entire account when individual posts are the concern.
- Make the review real. Require individualised reasoning from the approving judge, and automatic lapse of the order if approval is not given in time.
- Publish the orders. Make the order, the issuing body and the legal basis available to the account holder and the public, so that independent monitors are not the only record.
- Sunset and audit. Report annually how many 8/A orders were approved, modified or overturned.
A state that is confident in its security case should be willing to show its work. A mechanism that blocks 1,270 accounts in a single month, and then blocks the account that counts them, shows the opposite.