An announcement by X that it is challenging a request to ban imprisoned Mayor of Istanbul Ekrem Imamoglu’s presidential candidacy account in Turkey has been met with scepticism by digital campaigners.
The account, created to support Imamoglu’s candidacy for the next presidential election, was first blocked in Turkey late last month following a government request.
In a post on X on Wednesday, the company said Turkish laws “force” them to comply with the order last week, at risk of Turkey’s Information and Communication Technologies Authority (BTK) “throttling” the site’s access in the country.
“Although Turkey’s laws force us to comply with the order, we are challenging the order in court and, in the spirit of full transparency, are sharing the court order,” it said, posting a copy.
Imamoglu’s main X account, which had nearly 10 million followers, was blocked in Turkey in May 2025 under a similar order from the government, which X also said it had challenged in the courts.
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Meta and YouTube have also complied with requests from the Turkish government to block accounts and content associated with Imamoglu.
Yaman Akdeniz, founder of Turkish freedom of expression organisation IFOD, said he was sceptical of the willingness of the site, owned by self-proclaimed “free speech absolutist” Elon Musk, to actually challenge the Turkish authorities.
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“It is true to say that every now and again they appeal against decisions and lodge a few applications with the Constitutional Court – however, this is very selective and X chooses not to provide further details about the judicial challenges,” he told Middle East Eye.
According to the most recent X transparency report, the company received 11,107 removal requests from Turkey between July and December 2024 and took action in 86 percent of cases.
A Washington Post review of past disclosure data found the social media site acted on 71 percent of legal requests it received to remove content in the first half of 2024, up 20 percent from its previous reported figure in 2021.
The report said X had taken action in 68 percent of the cases requested by Turkey, which amounted to 9,364 requests in the first half of 2024.
“I must say Meta and the others are no different as they have all become the long arm of the Turkish law enforcement mechanism,” said Akdeniz.
Saudi dissident blocks
Turkey is not the only country to which X has responded to takedown requests for accounts belonging to government critics and dissidents.
The Guardian revealed on Tuesday that X had blocked the accounts of a number of prominent critics of the kingdom, including human rights campaigner Yahya Assiri and activist Abdullah Alaoudh, son of imprisoned cleric Salman al-Ouda.
It came on the heels of similar bans on Snapchat, Meta and Instagram over claims from the Saudi authorities that their accounts violated local laws.
However, at the time X had claimed it would not be following suit, and said that in a statement that it “strongly believes in defending and respecting the voice of our users”.
Saudi Arabia has previously invested billions of dollars into xAI, the company (now known as SpaceXAI) that runs both X and the controversial Grok chatbot.
MEE contacted X for comment, but had received no response at time of publication.
