Interior Minister Mustafa Çiftçi told a press conference in Amasya on 15 September 2026 that police cyber patrols had identified 184,000 criminal elements this year. He said 40,000 web pages had been closed, access had been blocked to 73,000 social media accounts, and 62,500 illegal betting sites had been shut down.

Çiftçi said the ministry patrols the cyber domain as well as the streets, describing it as continuous, and said that crimes committed online have real victims.

He gave no breakdown of the 73,000 accounts by legal ground, and did not say how many were subject to judicial review or how many blocking decisions were appealed or lifted.

The statement follows three days of documented blocking orders. Between 12 and 13 September, the accounts of LGBTI+ organisations, activists and university groups were restricted. On 13 September the Bakırköy 4th Criminal Judgeship of Peace, in decision no. 2026/9112, ordered the blocking of accounts belonging to Amnesty International’s Turkey branch, the newspaper Evrensel, the Media and Law Studies Association and Academics for Peace, citing national security and public order under Article 8/A of Internet Law No. 5651.

On extradition, Çiftçi said 684 people who had committed crimes in Turkey and fled abroad were returned during the eight-month period, and that Turkey had issued red notices or diffusions for them. He said 167 of the 684 were organised crime leaders or members. He did not say what the remaining 517 were sought for.

He said Georgia had returned 438 people to Turkey this year, and that he would continue visits to Greece, Germany and Italy concerning the extradition of organised crime members and leaders. He said such groups should not assume they will be left alone if they flee abroad.

Çiftçi also said 1,592 operations had been carried out against 562 organised crime groups since he took office in February 2026, and that around 3,500 people had been processed in a single day during recent nationwide operations.

On general crime, he reported 267,000 incidents across eight major categories in the first eight months of 2026, a fall of 14 per cent against a five-year average of about 309,000. Property crime stood at 136,600 against a 2021–2025 average of 196,500, a fall of 30.5 per cent.

Three EU member states named as extradition destinations are bound by the European Convention on Human Rights when assessing requests from a state whose judiciary the Court has found to have structural shortcomings.