On 13 September 2026, Turkish police raided LGBTQ+ and HIV-support organisations in several cities. Reuters reported that eight members of the rights group Kaos GL were jailed pending trial on 15 September, that at least 54 more were jailed in other provinces, and that at least 126 protesters were detained that day. The raids came with an online component. According to Bianet, the Istanbul 7th Penal Judgeship of Peace ordered access blocked to the websites and social media accounts of 73 associations and activist groups. EFF, writing on 9 October, called for those sites to be unblocked and for everyone detained to be released.
The arrests are a criminal-law story. The website blocks are a technology-policy story, and they show how much of Turkey's censorship machinery is built from statute, not improvisation.
The case for the state's position
Governments have a legitimate interest in removing illegal content quickly. Child sexual abuse material, incitement to suicide and facilitation of drug use are real harms, and a takedown process that takes weeks would protect no one. Turkey's Justice Minister Akın Gürlek framed the operation as protecting "children, the institution of the family, and public order", according to Al Jazeera. Law 5651 does list obscenity (Penal Code Article 226) and child sexual abuse among its grounds for blocking. Prosecutors also charged the Kaos GL suspects with "facilitating the publication of obscene material, including material accessible to children" (Reuters). A state is entitled to enforce an obscenity statute.
Why the instrument fails the proportionality test
The problem is what the law lets a blocking order reach. Under Article 8 of Law 5651 (as published on mevzuat.gov.tr), a judge or a prosecutor can order content removed or access blocked where there is "sufficient suspicion" of a listed offence. Where delay is risky, the prosecutor can order the block alone and must seek a judge's approval within 24 hours. Article 8(17) goes further. If a specific URL cannot be blocked technically, or URL-level blocking will not stop the violation, a block of the entire website can be ordered.
Article 8/A is faster still. On a request from the Presidency or a ministry, the agency head can order content removed or blocked. Providers must comply within four hours. A judge only reviews the order afterward. The judge has 48 hours to decide, and the order lapses if the judge does not rule. The statute names national security, public order, crime prevention and public health as grounds. A wide set of grounds, a short compliance window and review after the fact are the elements that make this instrument easy to apply to civil society.
The courts have flagged these weaknesses repeatedly:
- In Ahmet Yıldırım v. Turkey (18 December 2012), the European Court of Human Rights found a violation of Article 10 over the blocking of all of Google Sites. It said the domestic law imposed no obligation to examine whether wholesale blocking was justified and that the effects of the measure had been arbitrary (ECHR factsheet).
- In Cengiz and Others v. Turkey (1 December 2015), the Court found a violation over the blocking of YouTube. It noted there was no provision in the law allowing domestic courts to impose a blanket block on access to a platform.
- Turkey's own Constitutional Court annulled Article 9 of Law 5651 on 11 October 2023 (E.2020/76, K.2023/172), and the official text now marks that article as annulled. In the same decision it struck out the wording in Article 8(1) that had let the agency head order removal or blocking.
The Constitutional Court has the final say domestically, and the ECHR has said it can remedy these violations. In the 2022 Wikimedia Foundation v. Turkey decision the ECHR held that an individual application to the Constitutional Court must be exhausted for such complaints. That mechanism is slow, and it operates after the damage. A site that is blocked during a crackdown has lost its audience, its donors and its ability to share health information before any court rules.
What is different about this episode
Three features stand out. First, the targets are service providers as well as speakers. HIV-support organisations deliver prevention and testing information, so blocking them has a public-health cost that a one-off obscenity order does not. Second, the volume is large. Bianet's figure of 73 associations and groups differs from EFF's count of "a dozen organizations", and the two sources appear to count different things. Even the lower figure is a significant block list. Third, EFF notes that the government is presenting these groups as criminal organisations, citing Article 220 of the Penal Code. Once a group is labelled that way, the blocking order and the criminal case reinforce each other, and each can be cited as support for the other.
There is also an institutional change to watch. The statute text now shows amendments dated 24 July 2026 under Law 7590, which replace references to the Information and Communication Technologies Authority with a "Siber Güvenlik Başkanlığı" (Cybersecurity Presidency) in several articles. That is a change in who holds the blocking power, not in how broad it is. Reviewing the new body's practice is worth doing before anyone concludes the regime has been reformed.
What proportionate reform looks like
A pro-innovation, pro-speech approach does not require abolishing takedown powers. It requires four things:
- Prior judicial authorisation for blocks on organisations' sites, with Article 8/A confined to genuine emergencies.
- URL-level blocking by default, with whole-site blocks only on a written finding that nothing narrower works. The ECHR demanded this reasoning in 2012.
- Notice and a hearing for the site owner, as in the ECHR's Taganrog reasoning that owners should get a chance to remove allegedly illegal material.
- Published block lists with an expiry date, so that a site is not blocked indefinitely without anyone having to defend the block.
Turkey has already been told by its Constitutional Court and by Strasbourg what the problem is. The September blocks show that the instructions have not been implemented in the statute or in lower-court practice. Until they are, any group that annoys the government is one order away from disappearing from the Turkish web.