If you were planning on using one of the best VPN services in Türkiye then you are going to have to rethink things. The country has banned a host of the top providers.
On the back of its continued blocking of Instagram since Friday, Türkiye has now blocked some 27 options for Turkish citizens looking to access the social media site, or any geo-restricted part of the internet.
Why has Türkiye done this?
There is no official word so far on the reasons for the VPN ban, but speculation persists that Instagram was blocked as a response to Meta's site seemingly restricting pictures of recently assassinated Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh.
President Erdogan of Türkiye said in a speech on Monday addressing the social media platform the Turkish people "are facing a digital fascism that has no tolerance for even the photographs of Palestinian martyrs and bans them immediately."
Given the capability of VPNs to help users get around such geo-restrictions, it makes sense that they are an unfortunate second target of such a ban.
Which providers have been banned?
As we've said, many of the most popular VPN services in the world have been targeted, including the likes of NordVPN, ExpressVPN and Surfshark who each boast millions of users.
The graphic below provides a more comprehensive list of affected services.
Türkiye'den erişime engelli VPN servislerinin listesi: https://t.co/ttaery0W4m pic.twitter.com/OQHpGoHa5tAugust 4, 2024
Interestingly while NordVPN is supposedly one of the providers hit, they have told our team that they had noted no significant disruptions in their service so far.
Surfshark also hasn't actually noticed any untoward activity with VPN Product Manager Justas Pukys saying: "We have not registered any increase in attempts to block our service, but we are closely monitoring the situation in case that changes."
What can I do to avoid the ban?
There are plenty of providers not on that list of banned VPNs, most notably Proton VPN, which offers one of the best free VPNs and a paid subscription option too.
David Peterson, General Manager of Proton VPN told our sister site Techradar that "Usage in Turkey surged ninefold on Friday, after the block (on Instagram) was announced, and traffic levels continued to rise over the weekend as people look to get around the block."
You could also try PrivadoVPN, our current #1 choice of free VPN. If you're thinking about a paid VPN subscription, maybe choose one with a 30-day money-back guarantee or free trial so that you can check it works for you first.
