The Ministry of Justice announced on 30 September that the İstanbul 1st Criminal Judgeship of the Peace had ordered the closure of the website and social media accounts of T24, one of Türkiye’s best-known independent news outlets, founded in 2009.

The ministry’s note, circulated to press groups, states that the measure was taken within the İstanbul Chief Public Prosecutor’s “Ailem Güvende” (“My Family Is Safe”) investigation, and that T24 had “produced 118 items of content amounting to LGBT propaganda over the past year”. A file of T24’s coverage of LGBTI+ issues was attached.

T24 was served later the same day, by email at 17:00, by the Cyber Security Directorate. The notification it published gives the decision as no. 2026/8894 D.İş of 29 September, made under Article 8/A of Law No. 5651, and requires compliance “immediately and within four hours at the latest”. The target listed is not a set of articles but the domain: t24.com.tr.

The ministry’s note reached journalists before the decision reached T24.

Article 8/A permits blocking on national-security and public-order grounds, is executed before the affected party is heard, and is confirmed by a judgeship rather than a court. The order does not close T24 as a company; it makes its journalism unreachable from Türkiye.

T24 states that it had for some time been the subject of a campaign on X in which multiple accounts posted an identical video and text, questioning where its funding came from and asserting that “the real intention of T24, which stands out for publications targeting our family structure through LGBT content, is clear”. T24 says it has taken no funding from any company, person, institution, association, organisation or fund since it began publishing in 2009.

The “Ailem Güvende” investigation produced raids across 15 provinces on 13 September. Human Rights Watch reported on 18 September that 162 people were under investigation, at least 112 had been detained and 82 remanded. By 30 September Turkish reporting put the figures at 117 detained and 83 arrested. Among those remanded is the journalist Tuğba Tekerek, held since mid-September along with seven officers of the LGBTI+ association Kaos GL. “I only did a piece of reporting,” Tekerek said.

The order falls within a wider month of blocking. At least 80 X accounts were restricted on 26 September, among them the news outlet Kısa Dalga, whose Instagram account was blocked afterwards; at least 150 followed on 28 September and at least 147 on 30 September, the latter two waves chiefly over the collapsed investment funds.

An investigation opened to protect the family has now been used to make an entire national news website unreachable.