The social network has blocked the controversial page after a Turkish court ruled it “insulting to the prophet Muhammad”. The court order was issued by a Turkish court following a request by the prosecutor investigating a few pages on Facebook.

According to the court ruling, Facebook was required to block the page or face a nation-wide blockage in the case of failure to comply with the ruling. The statistics show that Facebook has around 40 million users in Turkey.

The social network did not comment on the matter. Of course, Facebook is obliged to comply with the laws of the countries where the social network operates, even despite the fact that such action can infringe free speech.

Over the 6 months to June 2014, the most popular social network said it restricted access to almost 1,900 pieces of material that were reported by the Turkish authorities and law enforcement officials under local laws, in particular law 5651 – the latter covers a range of offenses like defamation of Ataturk, as well as personal rights violation.

It should be noted that in January 2015, a court in Turkey’s southeastern province ordered a block on accessing Internet pages that showed the cover of the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo, as the latter depicted a cartoon of Muhammad. However, it was not clear whether that court order had been fully complied with.

The industry observers in the country point out that the court orders are the country’s most recent attempts to crack down on content considered as offending religious sensibilities in the primarily Muslim nation. In Turkey, the government of president Erdogan is seen as pushing a pro-Islamist agenda.

In January 2015, the local prosecutors opened an inquiry into a newspaper that dared to reprint parts of the latest issue of Charlie Hebdo.

It is also known that a year ago, Turkey restricted access to Twitter hours after the current president – then the prime minister – threatened to ban entirely the social media networks. This happened after wiretapped recordings had been leaked online to the social networks, which damaged Erdogan’s reputation ahead of the elections. Nevertheless, Turkish users, like all others on the planet, discovered they could circumvent the blockade by using text messaging services or disguising the location of their devices to continue posting messages on the website.