Turkey blocks X account of British reporter

Turkish authorities have blocked the X account of a journalist for the British broadcaster Sky News, she said Monday, in the latest wave of social media censorship that a rights group denounced as a "tsunami".

Alex Crawford told AFP she had been notified by X that her account was being blocked in Turkey, and had contacted the Turkish presidency to ask why but had received no answer.

Sky News "is contesting on a matter of principle," she said.

Turkey's Freedom of Expression Association (IFOD) said the British journalist's account had been flagged in a mid-September court decision as the authorities began a major crackdown on the LGBTQ community for "obscenity" in the name of protecting family values.

"As part of the 'obscenity' investigation, Sky News reporter Alex Crawford's X account (@AlexCrawfordSky) -- which was among the accounts blocked by a (court) decision... was made invisible from Turkey by X on 5 October," IFOD said in a statement.

The move was the latest in a surge of legal challenges by authorities that have made invisible in Turkey the accounts of journalists, media organisations, LGBTQ activists, women's rights groups, lawyers, unions, academics, financial experts and beyond.

Last Wednesday, Turkey shut down the website and social media accounts of T24, a leading independent news website, citing its "LGBT propaganda".

In a statement, the justice ministry said T24 had "produced 118 pieces of content constituting LGBT propaganda over the past year".

Last month, Turkish authorities blocked nearly 1,300 accounts -- a figure higher than the total for 2025, IFOD said on Friday, a day after its own EngelliWeb internet censorship monitoring account was blocked.

"In September, the wave of censorship turned into a tsunami. In one month, at least 1,270 X accounts were blocked from access, and 90 percent were made invisible from Turkey," it said, saying they had a total of over 35 million followers.

"The number of X accounts blocked ... throughout 2025, a year marked by the events of March 19, was 995," it said of the date when Istanbul Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu was arrested, sparking Turkey's worst street protests in over a decade.

It said the censorship went beyond the LGBTQ community to impact "a very wide range of groups" posting about anything seen by the authorities as controversial, which included recent posts on a sprawling investment fund crisis that erupted in mid-September.