Turkey’s VPN ban is “nothing new,” but there are still some workarounds
As we recently reported, Turkey appears to be restricting access to some of the top VPN apps. The move is said to be taking place because these services are becoming important to both citizens and visitors trying to use Instagram, which has been blocked since last Friday, August 2, 2024.
While it’s true that Turkish authorities are cracking down on some VPN providers, Ali Safa Korkut, a Turkish journalist and project coordinator at Free Web Turkey, believes that blocking these Turkish VPNs is hardly part of a new wave of internet outages.
“Since most VPN services are currently banned, people are having trouble accessing Instagram,” Korkut told me. “But this is not a new development.”
Turkiye’den erişime engelli VPN services list: pic.twitter.com/OQHpGoHa5tAugust 4, 2024
Korkut explains that 16 of the affected providers (see tweet above) were actually blocked during a wave of VPN bans in December 2023. These include some of TechRadar’s top recommendations, such as ProtonVPN, Surfshark, IPVanish, and CyberGhost.
“In addition to these 16 VPN services, there are 11 other VPN services were also blocked “Access to Turkey has expired at various times in the past,” Korkut added.
Surfshark also confirmed that some users have been experiencing service interruptions in Turkey since late last year.
“Following the recent news that Instagram has been blocked, we have not seen an increase in attempts to block our service, but we are closely monitoring the situation in case this changes,” Justas Pukys, VPN Product Manager at Surfshark, told me.
Can you still use a VPN in Turkey?
With Instagram’s block still in place, chances are you’re looking for a way to get around the ban — whether you live in the country or plan to visit soon.
So far, it appears that people in Turkey have managed to use some of the affected VPN apps. The providers I spoke to – NordVPN, ExpressVPN, ProtonVPN, Surfshark, and Private Internet Access (PIA) – actually saw a big increase in site traffic from the country and registrations, with no signs of new restrictions.
Did you know?
Virtual private network (VPN) is security software that, while encrypting your internet connections, also spoofs your IP address location. Such a capability allows you to grant access to otherwise geographically restricted content. That is exactly what authorities in Turkey and some other countries with high levels of online censorship often try to prevent.
If you are visiting the country from abroad, I recommend downloading the VPN app of your choice before entering the country to avoid any issues.
Either way, signing up for as many services as possible is beneficial so that you can switch between apps if certain VPNs stop working. I recommend checking out our dedicated page for the best free VPNs to get only the safest freebies.
Connecting to your VPN app through the Tor Browser can also help you bypass restrictions. Connections may be slower—Tor routes traffic through three layers of encryption, in fact—but it’s worth it if you can’t get your VPN to work otherwise.
If the above doesn’t work, Korkut recommends trying changing your DNS. “A lot of people are trying to reach Instagram using this method right now,” he said.
Pukys also invites anyone experiencing issues using the Surfshark apps to contact the provider’s 24/7 customer support, “who will attempt to assist in re-establishing a broken connection.”
We test and review VPN services in the context of legal recreational use. For example: 1. Accessing a service from another country (subject to the terms and conditions of that service). 2. Protect your online security and enhance your online privacy abroad. We do not support or tolerate illegal or malicious use of VPN services. The consumption of paid pirated content is not endorsed or approved by Future Publishing.
