If you're tired of censorship and dystopian threats against civil liberties, subscribe to Reclaim The Net. Turkey’s government blocked 41 social media accounts on X, Facebook, and Instagram last Friday, deleted content from 75 more, and launched criminal proceedings against account holders, all on the grounds that they spread what officials called “disinformation and provocative content.” The crackdown followed the start of attacks on Iran. Presidential Communications Director Burhanettin Duran framed the deletions as a national security response, saying the targeted accounts had been “systematically sharing unverified content aimed at creating fear, panic and uncertainty in society.” Who decided the content was disinformation? The government. Who gets to define “provocative content”? The government. Who determines what threatens “public order, social peace, and our national security”? Also, the government; the same government that ordered the blocks. The operation involved the Turkish Presidency’s Communications Directorate, the cybercrime department of the Security Directorate General, the Information and Communication Technologies Authority, and the chief public prosecutors’ offices. A coordinated state apparatus, mobilized to silence social media accounts during a regional conflict. Duran used the phrase “home front” to describe what the accounts were allegedly targeting, a term Turkish officials reach for during security crises to invoke domestic unity. The practical effect of invoking it here: posting unverified content about a foreign war becomes a threat to national cohesion, prosecutable under criminal law. “Especially since the attacks against Iran began, some social media accounts have been systematically sharing unverified content aimed at creating fear, panic, and uncertainty in society. The relevant institutions of our state have been closely monitoring this process from the very beginning, and the necessary decisive steps have been taken against attempts at digital manipulation targeting public order, social peace, and our national security,” Duran said on the social media platform NSosyal, which is a Turkish Mastodon-based platform. The chilling effect is the point. Turkey did more than delete 116 accounts and pieces of content. It announced, loudly and officially, that the state is watching, that prosecutors are involved, and that sharing unverified content about a nearby war can result in criminal charges. Anyone in Turkey considering posting about the conflict now knows the parameters. Duran said the Turkish state “sees the digital sphere as an inseparable part of national security.” What that means, translated out of the official language: the government claims authority over what can be said online during a crisis, and it gets to define. The accounts were on X, Facebook, and Instagram. None of those platforms issued public statements about the removals. If you're tired of censorship and dystopian threats against civil liberties, subscribe to Reclaim The Net. The post Turkey Blocks 41 Social Media Accounts Over Iran War Posts appeared first on Reclaim The Net.