In Turkey, two Facebook posts are enough to land you in jail. By Ömer Ongun & Umut Özsu
In October 2014, protesters in dozens of cities and towns throughout Turkey came together to pressure the government into providing assistance to the mostly Kurdish inhabitants of Kobanî, a Syrian town directly adjacent to the Turkish border that was then under heavy siege by Islamic State forces. Police and demonstrators clashed violently and repeatedly during these protests. Among those supporting the protests were members of opposition political parties such as the Peoples’ Democratic Party (Halkların Demokratik Partisi, or “HDP”).
Six years later, on 25 September 2020, Cihan Erdal, a PhD student at Carleton University in Ottawa, Canada, was detained in Turkey, along with dozens of other academics, activists, and elected officials, for his involvement in the HDP at the time of the 2014 protests. Erdal had returned to Turkey in August to conduct research and check on his elderly parents.
During the first 36 hours of his detention, Erdal was prevented from meeting with legal counsel. He was eventually afforded access to counsel and transferred to an F-type high-security prison. A permanent resident of Canada, Erdal has sat in an Ankara prison ever since. Much of this time has been spent in solitary confinement. No details about his case were made available until 7 January, when he and others were finally charged on various grounds, including 37 cases of homicide and disrupting the unity and territorial integrity of the state….
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