Turkey freezes video game Roblox amid Instagram row

ISTANBUL — Turkey has blocked the online game Roblox, which is popular among teenagers, a week after it froze access to Instagram following censorship accusations against the tech giant.

The move late Wednesday comes amid a growing codemnation of social media by President Recep Tayyip Erdogan who has accused online platforms of “fascism” and failing to remove posts the authorities deem offensive.

Roblox, a platform that allows players to create their own games, has been downloaded more than 41 million times in Turkey since its launch in 2015.

Justice Minister Yilmaz Tunc said Roblox had been suspended because “it contains content that will cause abuse of children”. Prosecutors in Adana are investigating Roblox.

Instagram access has been blocked in Turkey since Friday.

The US-owned platform responded to the government’s accusations by saying it had taken down more than 2,500 posts at its request in the first six months of the year.

Erdogan on Monday said social network platforms “cannot even tolerate photos of Palestinian martyrs without immediately banning them”. His communications chief added that Instagram prevented posting condolence messages over the killing of Hamas political leader Ismail Haniyeh.

Turkey may continue a social media crackdown as the head of a parliamentary digital platform commission, Huseyin Yayman, said there had been calls to block Tiktok.

“People who see me on the street stop me to tell me: ‘You will go to paradise if you shut down Tiktok’,” Yayman told news agency DHA.

Istanbul’s mayor and oppposition politician Ekrem Imamoglu slammed the authorities’ move, calling it “inconceivable”.

“Those who make these decisions are ignorant about the new world, the economy and technology,” Imamoglu wrote on the X social media platform.