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Turkey saw restricted access to social media this Friday, amid the unrest which strangled the nation late last night. The major social media sites including Facebook, Twitter and YouTube were throttled by Turkish government just shortly after the news that Turkish military was being deployed in various areas of Istanbul and Ankara during what is being called an attempted military coup.
Turkey Blocks, a Twitter account that monitors sites’ blockades in Turkey, reported right at 11:04 PM Istanbul standard time that Facebook, Twitter and YouTube were down in the Turkish territory.
Confirmed: Twitter, Facebook & YouTube blocked in #Turkey at 10:50PM after apparent military uprising in #Turkey pic.twitter.com/J9ER5yOGYP
— Turkey Blocks (@TurkeyBlocks) July 15, 2016
Although Dyn Research, a research agency, claimed that the block lasted for about one and a half hour, Turkey Blocks indicated that the social media access went unresponsive for about 2 hours. Twitter Enterprise’s Policy handle claimed that they were observing an intentional slowing of traffic in Turkey.
We have no reason to think we’ve been fully blocked in #Turkey, but we suspect there is an intentional slowing of our traffic in country.
— Policy (@policy) July 15, 2016
Facebook declined any comment on the news story. A YouTube spokesperson, however, told Fortune, “We are aware of reports that YouTube is down in Turkey, however, systems seem to be functioning normally.”
Some people, however, were able to connect to these social media websites through VPN’s or proxy browsers.
#FacebookLive is not completely blocked in Turkey: Many people are currently live https://t.co/KFXJS410uF #Turkey pic.twitter.com/MY1pnakr4N
— BeLive.tv (@BeLiveTV_) July 15, 2016
In the times of crisis, Turkey has been putting restrictions on the internet access to prevent news stories that could hurt its image from escaping abroad.
As the coup attempt was unfolded, President Erdogan addressed his supporters through national TV using Facetime on his iPhone.
