‘The internet’s sewer’: why Turkey blocked its most popular social site

Launched on the eve of the millennium, Turkey’s most popular homegrown social media website has weathered lawsuits, criticism from the highest levels of government and even death threats directed at one of its founders. A simple editable online dictionary turned national obsession, Ekşi Sözlük has for more than two decades spurred its own biting form of social satire while providing a rare haven for free expression on the Turkish internet.

But this year’s earthquakes that upended life across Turkey may prove to be the death knell for Ekşi Sözlük, which...