ISTANBUL, Turkiye - Accounts of more than a dozen Turkish LGBTQ+ organizations have been blocked on the X social media platform at the request of authorities advocating traditional family values, a watchdog said on Saturday. Among the blocked accounts are that of Kaos GL rights organization and lawyer Levent Piskin, the Ifod media watchdog said. The X accounts, followed by tens of thousands of people, were not accessible in Turkiye without a VPN connection, AFP observed on Saturday. Turkiye’s LGBTQ community has been frequently targeted by the authorities, with with President Recep Tayyip Erdogan lashing the community as a “deviant movement” of “perverts.” In June, Turkiye blocked some 40 X accounts linked to feminist or LGBTQ+ groups. Last year, the Turkish authorities persuaded X to block more than 700 accounts critical of authorities, at the height of a wave of protests triggered by the arrest of Istanbul’s opposition mayor, Ekrem Imamoglu.
