ISTANBUL: International condemnation of Turkish student Cihan Erdal’s detention is growing ahead of his trial on Monday.
The United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detentions accepted a petition from the doctoral student as “urgent” and requested an explanation from Ankara on the student’s controversial seven-month detention.
Erdal, 32, was a student at Carleton University in Canada and also a rights activist known to be a “person of peace and non-violence.”
He was detained last September in Ankara over two social media posts seen by Turkish authorities as an “incitement of violence.”
Erdal was initially kept in solitary confinement for about three weeks.
The student was then jailed for sharing on his Facebook account a news article about pro-Kurdish People’s Democratic Party’s (HDP) former co-chair Selahattin Demirtas and another article about a man whose son was found dead when completing compulsory military service.
Turkey’s official indictment that was released early in January accused Erdal of encouraging the Kobane protests of 2014, when thousands of people took to the streets in southeastern Turkey to protest against Ankara’s inaction in protecting Syrian Kurds against Daesh.
Several members of the HDP — mayors and parliamentarians, as well as local officials — were arrested for inciting violence during the protests, which turned deadly after members of Turkish Hezbollah also gathered on the streets.
Erdal’s first hearing in the Kobane trial will be held on Monday in Ankara.
He was an active member of the HDP youth branch before moving to Canada for doctoral studies. He was a permanent resident of Canada, but not yet a full citizen.
Carleton University in Ottawa has also sought international support for his case.
His detention sparked global condemnation and a petition calling for his release that was signed by thousands of academics around the world last October.
Renowned scholars Judith Butler, Noam Chomsky and Etienne Balibar were among the signatories.
The petition said that Erdal was in Istanbul during the Kobane protests visiting his family and conducting doctoral field research on youth-led social movements across Europe.
“This unfair and inappropriate accusation endangers the future of a promising and brilliant young researcher in the social sciences,” it said.
“We academics and researchers around the world defend Cihan Erdal and demand that the Turkish government free him, and that the Canadian government support his release. We kindly request that university and academic institutions worldwide support Cihan Erdal, so that he may continue his research in freedom,” it added.
In January, several members of the European Parliament also released a statement urging Ankara to release Erdal.
“It is beyond absurdity that Erdal is facing a life sentence based on the evidence of two tweets, while he was only trying to make Turkey a better place. We ask for his immediate release and call for an end to this travesty of justice,” the statement reads.
The UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention has closely monitored the trial and labeled it “a case of deprivation of liberty in violation of international standards.” The group said that the charges against the Turkish student violate the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights that was signed and ratified by Turkey.
In early April, Erdal was denied bail by a Turkish court, quelling hopes that he would be released.
During the hearing, his Canadian legal counsel Paul Champ said that Erdal’s arrest violated “the protections of freedom of expression, political participation and freedom of association,” and that it constituted “arbitrary detention.”
Champ added that Erdal’s social media posts, as a matter of free expression, “do not justify any decision to keep him in prison,” and that he should be in university rather than behind bars.
Erdal’s family also launched a website for his release and raised more than $20,000 to pay for his legal fees, books and clean clothes while jailed.
