Turkey shocked by second day of internet outages
Popular social media platforms remain restricted in central Turkey for a second day in a row due to ongoing anti-Syrian riots. Internet blackouts also continue in the south of the country, spreading to Syria’s border areas.
Violence against Syrian refugees broke out in the Kayseri region on Sunday when authorities arrested a Syrian man for allegedly sexually harassing a 7-year-old Syrian girl. Angry civilians set fire to Syrian shops and overturned cars, calling on all Syrian residents to leave. More than 470 people have been held in Kayseri so far, with seven protesters were reportedly killed during fighting in northern Syria.
With such a serious situation unfolding on the streets of various cities, authorities decided to disrupt the offline world once again. This has forced Turkish people to turn to the best VPN services to access popular platforms including X, YouTube, Instagram, Facebook, and TikTok and keep the information flowing.
⚠️ Update: Statistics show that social media platforms such as X, YouTube, Instagram, Facebook and TikTok remain restricted for a second day in Kayseri, #Turkey, the epicentre of anti-migrant protests that have spread across southern Turkey and Syria’s border areas pic.twitter.com/aktQX91I5WJuly 2, 2024
According to Alp Toker, founder of internet watchdog NetBlocks, this new wave of online blackouts shows how much skill the Turkish authorities have developed in online censorship.
“The geographically targeted selective filtering of social media is rare worldwide and underscores the advanced capabilities that Turkey possesses,” Toker told me.
Researchers at NetBlocks have already followed a similar technique that has been used in previous incidents, Toker said, including during the Military operations 2019 in southern Turkey. On that occasion too, connecting to a Turkey VPN was the only way to access Twitter, Facebook, WhatsApp and Instagram in the region.
Turkey is a recurring perpetrator of internet restrictions and social media blackouts. Since 2015, authorities have enforced nationwide information blackouts at least 20 times, according to data from NetBlocks. In 2023, Twitter was offline for just two days, but that was when people needed it most: after the devastating earthquake that killed more than 15,000 people in both Turkey and Syria.
How a VPN Can Help
“Users in Kayseri, where the protests began, report that VPN services are currently an effective solution, although disruptions may be more extensive further south,” Toker told me.
That’s because a VPN, short for virtual private network, is a security software that spoofs your IP address location to make you appear in a completely different part of the world within seconds. This means that this tool is an effective way to bypass social media restrictions.
If you’re struggling to access a blocked social media platform or other censored site, all you need to do is download a reliable VPN app. While TechRadar’s overall #1 pick at the time of writing is NordVPN, I recommend checking out our best free VPN guide to find the most reliable freebies out there: PrivadoVPN Free and Proton VPN Free are currently the best according to TechRadar’s experts.
Once you’ve logged into your chosen VPN, you’ll need to select a server that’s located in a different country that doesn’t enforce these kinds of restrictions. It’s worth noting, however, that Turkey has also targeted specific providers with VPN bans in the past, so I’d recommend downloading a few different apps to be able to hop between services if necessary.
It goes without saying that such a circumvention tool needs an internet connection to work. This means that VPNs can’t help if the web infrastructure is completely down.
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