WSWS demands Turkey release Max Zirngast, Hatice Göz and Mithatcan Türetken
By
the World Socialist Web Site Editorial Board
25 September 2018
The World Socialist Web Site demands the immediate and unconditional release of Austrian graduate student and journalist Max Zirngast and two Turkish left-wing activists, Mithatcan Türetken and Hatice Göz, who were detained September 11 by the political police of the right-wing authoritarian regime of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on trumped-up charges of support for terrorism.
Anti-terror units dragged Zirngast out of his Ankara apartment at 5 o’clock in the morning, arresting the two Turkish citizens, also in Ankara, at the same time.
After being held incommunicado and interrogated for 10 days, Zirngast, Türetken and Göz were finally formally arrested and remanded to custody by Judge Fatih Yilmaz, who claimed that, despite the authorities’ “investigations” being incomplete, their conviction on the offense of “being members of a terrorist organization” was likely and that the defendants posed a flight risk.
Pre-trial detention in Turkey is a form of legal limbo that can drag on for years without defendants ever being brought to court.
Zirngast has written regularly on Turkish politics for the Austrian publication re: volt, the German daily Junge Welt as well as the US website Jacobin. His articles have criticized the reactionary and despotic measures of Erdogan and his ruling Party for Justice and Development (AKP).
He has also contributed to the newspaper of Toplumsal Özgürlük Partisi (TOP—Social Freedom Party), whose members, Mithatcan Türetken and Hatice Göz are charged along with him.
Zirngast is quoted in the Turkish media as forthrightly telling the prosecutor and the judge: “I am a socialist, I…