Meta has restored access in Turkey to its social media platform Threads, nearly two years after shutting down the service to comply with an interim measure imposed by the Turkish Competition Authority over concerns about data sharing with Instagram.
The Competition Authority announced on Tuesday that it had lifted the interim measure after Meta introduced changes allowing users to create Threads accounts without linking them to Instagram.
Under the new system users can continue signing in with their Instagram accounts or create a standalone Threads account using only a phone number.
Users who choose the standalone option will have their Threads data kept separate from information collected through Meta’s other services, according to the regulator. The authority said the arrangement gives users greater control over their personal data.
The dispute began in 2024 when the Competition Authority imposed an interim measure on Meta as part of an investigation into whether linking Instagram and Threads violated competition law. The regulator argued that combining data collected through two platforms could harm competition and strengthen Meta’s position in the social media market.
Meta subsequently shut down Threads in Turkey, saying it was doing so to comply with the regulator’s order while maintaining that its practices complied with Turkish law. The company was later fined for failing to fully comply with the interim measure.
Meta launched Threads in July 2023 as a text-based social networking platform designed to compete with X. The service initially required users to sign up through Instagram and allowed them to carry over their existing usernames and networks.