Türkiye Scrubs Visa Corruption Reports From the Internet Mid-Investigation

Key Takeaways

• Türkiye's BTK invoked Article 8/A of Law No. 5651 to block four articles from "The Visa Empire," an ongoing international investigation into VFS Global's visa outsourcing monopoly in Türkiye, coordinated by Lighthouse Reports across 14 media organizations in 12 countries.
• The series exposed alleged ties between VFS Global's Turkish business partner Gateway Management, company owner Halis Ali Çakmak, and former Foreign Minister Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu, and was not yet complete when the block was issued.
• When journalists reported on the censorship, an Istanbul court blocked that coverage too, and when coverage of that censorship appeared, a third court blocked it as well, all using the same national security justification.
• The blocked articles survive on the Wayback Machine, and journalist Canan Coşkun confirmed additional installments were still forthcoming at the time the block was issued.

When "National Security" Means "Inconvenient Reporting"

Türkiye's BTK, the country's internet authority, has blocked four investigative articles from a news site called Kısa Dalga under Article 8/A of Law No. 5651, the emergency censorship provision that allows access blocks for reasons including national security, public order, crime prevention, and public health. The articles were part of "The Visa Empire," an ongoing international investigation coordinated by Lighthouse Reports with 14 media organizations across 12 countries, and the series was not yet finished when the block came down.

The investigation's findings are not exactly abstract. "The Visa Empire" reported that VFS Global, a leading visa application intermediary, routinely offered applicants nominally optional services like VIP lounges, SMS notifications, courier delivery, and document scanning, while those services functioned in practice as unavoidable additional costs built into the process.

The series also covered the Türkiye operations of VFS Global's local business partner, Gateway Management, and examined alleged ties between Gateway's owner Halis Ali Çakmak and former Foreign Minister Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu, with appointment slots reportedly reaching 300 euros per person on the black market. What the government labeled a national security threat looks, from the outside, like a monopoly story that names the right people.

Each Block Spawns Another Block, and Then Another

The first order came from the Istanbul 9th Peace Criminal Court on June 1, 2026, and covered the four published installments. Journalist Canan Coşkun, who prepared the series, announced on social media that more parts were still to come. The censorship story then became the story, and Türkiye's courts handled that in the only way they apparently know how.

On June 2, the Istanbul 5th Peace Criminal Court blocked coverage of the censorship itself. On June 3, the Istanbul 7th Peace Criminal Court blocked coverage of that coverage, citing, naturally, the same national security and public order justification all three times. Three separate courts, three separate orders, three consecutive days, and an identical legal rationale applied to the original journalism, the reporting about the censorship of the journalism, and then the reporting about the reporting about the censorship of the journalism.

I find it genuinely difficult to describe this as a legal process. What it resembles far more closely is a content removal machine with judicial paperwork attached, and the paperwork is the part that gives it the cover it needs to keep running. Türkiye already has a well-documented habit of sentencing journalists for their opinions, but blocking an ongoing investigation before it is even complete, and then blocking every layer of coverage that follows, is a particular kind of escalation.

Censorship That Cannot Outrun What It Is Censoring

The blocked articles were archived on the Wayback Machine before the orders took effect and remain accessible there. The investigation is still readable for anyone willing to find it, which is the predictable outcome when governments use internet censorship to suppress journalism that has already been published. Türkiye's long record of jailing journalists who cover corruption has not made the corruption disappear, and blocking four articles from a 12-country investigation will not make the findings disappear either.

The question the censorship order never answers is what, precisely, in a visa outsourcing investigation constitutes a threat to national security. A monopoly structure? A former minister's name? The number revealed sums? At some point, Türkiye's government will need to explain what it is protecting when it protects itself from journalism, because right now the explanation on offer is the same three words applied to every inconvenient story: national security.

To call this situation absurd would be an understatement because no one should ever have to resort to any kind of additional tools just to read journalism that was freely published on the open internet days ago. However, if you’re in Türkiye or any other place where the reality is constantly subjected to government censorship, a virtual private network might just be what you need, and you can get Mysterium VPN with 78% off right now.