If you were thinking of using the best VPN service in Turkey, you may need to reconsider. The country has banned a host of top providers.

Following the continued blocking of Instagram since Friday, Turkey is now blocking some 27 options for Turkish citizens trying to access social media sites, or geo-restricted parts of the Internet.

There has been no official announcement so far as to why the VPN was banned, but speculation persists that Instagram may have been blocked in response to a meta site that appears to restrict photos of recently assassinated Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh. In a speech on Monday, Turkish President Erdogan addressed the social media platform, saying that the Turkish people "face a digital fascism that does not tolerate even pictures of Palestinian martyrs and immediately bans them."

Given VPNs' ability to help users circumvent such regional restrictions, it makes sense that VPNs are an unfortunate second target of such bans.

As we have noted, many of the world's most popular VPN services have been targeted, including services like NordVPN, ExpressVPN, and Surfshark, which each boast millions of users.

The following figure provides a more comprehensive list of affected services.

Interestingly, NordVPN is listed as one of the providers hit, but they told our team that so far they have not seen any major disruptions to their services.

Surfshark has also not really noticed any untoward activity, according to VPN Product Manager Justas Pukys: "We have not seen an increase in attempts to block our service, but we are monitoring closely in case the situation changes. We are closely monitoring the situation in case it changes.

There are many providers that are not on the list of banned VPNs, among them Proton VPN, which is one of the best free VPNs and also offers paid subscription options.

David Peterson, general manager of Proton VPN, told our sister site Techradar, "On Friday, when (Instagram's) block was announced, usage in Turkey surged ninefold, with people trying to circumvent the block by people trying to circumvent the block, and traffic levels continued to rise over the weekend."

You can also try PrivadoVPN, currently the #1 free VPN. If you are considering a paid VPN subscription, choose one with a 30-day money-back guarantee or a free trial to see if it is right for you first.