The Instagram ban is hitting female entrepreneurs in Turkey the hardest

“We use Instagram to showcase our products and reach a wider customer base,” said Ezgi Akincilar, founder of online retailer Antalya’dan Iste, which sells food products from honey and jam to canned artichokes.

Akincilar estimates she owes more than half of her revenue to users who find her through Instagram. “There is no other platform that can take its place,” she said by phone.

Turkey’s internet regulator shut down access to Instagram on August 2 without explaining why. It came after a senior adviser to President Recep Tayyip Erdogan criticized the platform for what he described as “censorship” of posts related to the death of Ismail Haniyeh, the political head of the Palestinian militant group Hamas.

Transport and Infrastructure Minister Abdulkadir Uraloglu later cited wider reasons, including “attacks” against Turkey’s founding father Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, unauthorized betting and “posts of a sexual nature”. He also accused Instagram of censorship.

Instagram’s owner, Meta Platforms Inc, did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Bloomberg.

Sinem Kocabas, who a year ago received an entrepreneurship award from state-run Halkbank, says sales have stopped. Her association Dear Deer Love, which sells baby products such as mattresses and bedding, owes about 60% of its revenue to its Instagram business stream.

“Everybody loses money. Some companies may even close if this ban is not lifted soon,” said Kocabas.

Decrease in demand

The ban comes at a delicate time for Turkish businesses, with domestic demand slowing after the central bank raised its benchmark interest rate to 50 percent from 8.5 percent in less than a year to control inflation.

Spending on credit cards, widely used for online purchases, has remained flat since April, even for essential items, the central bank said in a report on Thursday. Discretionary spending contracted in real terms.

The decision to block Instagram may “disrupt communications and lead to customer dissatisfaction,” said Esra Bezircioglu, president of the Turkish Women Entrepreneurs Association. Such disruptions would create “strategic difficulties” for businesses, she said in an emailed response to Bloomberg.

The prospect of lifting the ban is uncertain. On August 6, the minister, Abdulkadir Uraloglu, cited “significant progress” in talks with Instagram, without giving details. Social media companies “must follow the laws of our country,” Justice Minister Yilmaz Tunc said.

“We are in a difficult situation,” said Fatma Gonca Yurtseven, a survivor of the February 2023 twin earthquakes in southern Hatay province. She is part of a collective of women who sell local products online under the brand “Hatay Bohcasi”.

“We have no other channels for this business,” Yurtseven said. “A lot of women make a living out of it. We don’t know what to do.”

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