ANKARA, Turkey (AP) — Turkey’s communications authority blocked access to social media platform Instagram on Friday, the latest case of a crackdown on websites in the country.

The Information and Communications Technology Authority, which regulates the internet, announced the blocking early Friday but gave no reason. The pro-government newspaper Sabah said the blocking of access was a response to the deletion of posts by Turkish users on Instagram expressing condolences over the killing of Hama politician Ismail Haniyeh.

This came days after Fahrettin Altun, presidential communications director and adviser to President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, criticized Meta’s own platform for preventing Turkish users from posting condolences for Haniyeh.

Unlike its Western allies, Turkey does not consider Hamas a terrorist organization. Erdogan, a fierce critic of Israeli military actions in Gaza, called the group “liberation fighters.”

On Friday, the country will observe a day of mourning for Haniyeh, with flags flying at half-mast.

Turkey has a long history of censoring social media and websites. According to the Freedom of Expression Association, a nonprofit organization that unites lawyers and human rights activists, hundreds of thousands of domains have been blocked since 2022. The video-sharing platform YouTube was blocked from 2007 to 2010.

The Associated Press