Turkish authorities arrested more than 1,100 people including journalists, while bombarding the social media platform X with requests to block hundreds of accounts after tens of thousands took to the streets in the largest anti-government protests in years.
One journalist was detained while covering demonstrations that took place outside Istanbul city hall, while nine others were detained in dawn raids.
The sweeping arrests came the morning after the Istanbul mayor, Ekrem İmamoğlu, was officially arrested on corruption charges and sent to a high-security prison on the outskirts of the city, on the same day he was named the opposition’s candidate for president.
Mass demonstrations triggered by İmamoğlu’s detention last week amount to the largest in Turkey in more than a decade. The protests have resulted in increasing pushback from the Turkish authorities, with police now readily deploying pepper spray, teargas and armoured water cannon trucks against crowds gathering in Istanbul as well as other major towns and cities across the country.
The Turkish interior minister, Ali Yerlikaya, said 1,133 people had been detained in five days, starting with the dawn raid in which İmamoğlu and tens of municipal officials were taken into custody. Many of those detained in the days since were arrested for breaching a city-wide ban on protests in Istanbul. The city’s governor also restricted entry to Istanbul over the weekend in an attempt to curb the demonstrations.
Yerlikaya added that “some circles have been abusing the right to assembly and demonstration, attempting to disrupt public order, inciting street events and attacking our police. Such actions are aimed at disrupting the peace and security of our people.”
Turkish authorities deny that the charges against İmamoğlu, a rival of the president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, are political. Even so the crackdown on the Istanbul mayor as well as the protests have proven costly to the Turkish state, as economists estimate the Turkish central bank spent up to $25bn (£19.3bn) propping up the lira in three days last week.
Financial analyst Haluk Bürümcekçi said that while the Turkish central bank had enough reserves to sustain the interventions, these “would not be adequate for similar ongoing demand”.
Turkey has struggled for years with an economic crisis that has driven up the cost of living, fuelling criticism of the government long before the demonstrations began.
The Turkish capital markets board said over the weekend that it had banned short selling for one month because of “recent developments”, at the Istanbul stock exchange, as the markets reeled from the impact of the crackdown on protests and İmamoğlu’s detention.
Evin Barış Altıntaş, who heads the Media and Law Studies Association, a free speech organisation that supports journalists detained in Turkey, said it was notable that most of the journalists detained overnight were photographers.
“The main aim is to cut off decrease the number of people taking photos at protests,” she said, pointing to threats from Ebubekir Şahin, the head of Turkey’s media regulator (RTÜK) to suspend broadcaster’s licences for broadcasting live footage of the demonstrations. Şahin later denied any threats or that RTÜK’s actions threatened media freedom in Turkey, saying simply “the state will do what is necessary”.
Altıntaş said the arrests and threats to broadcasters were part of the government’s efforts to stifle coverage of the growing protests in the hope of quelling the demonstrations entirely.
“The protests are huge in number, so the authorities are trying very hard to contain that,” she said. “There’s an obvious attempt to stop the dissemination of news reports about protests, but I’m not sure how they will manage that as these are growing every day.”
The global government affairs team from the social media platform X said they “object to multiple court orders from the Turkish Information and Communication Technologies Authority to block over 700 accounts of news organisations, journalists, political figures, students, and others within Türkiye.”
“We believe this decision from the Turkish government is not only unlawful, it hinders millions of Turkish users from news and political discourse in their country. We look forward to defending these principles through the legal system,” they added.
Altıntaş said that despite claims by the X boss, Elon Musk, that free speech was defended on the platform, it was clear X was allowing at least 110 accounts to be blocked in Turkey, according to her records. These included journalists covering the protests, as well as feminist organisations and student groups she added.
“There is a clear attempt to censor images and videos of the protests, and this is obviously a part of that,” she said.