Questions sent to jailed LGBTI+ activist Cihan Erdal found ‘objectionable’

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The questions sent to LGBTI+ activist and academic Cihan Erdal for an interview for bianet was found "objectionable" by the prison administration.

Cihan Erdal, a PhD student at Carleton University in Canada, was in İstanbul for his thesis research when he was faced with a detention warrant along with 81 others in seven provinces across Turkey and was taken into custody as part of an investigation launched into the Kobanî protests by the Ankara Chief Public Prosecutor's Office. Detained on September 25, 2020, Erdal was arrested on October 2 and sent to Ankara Sincan No. F2 Prison.

CLICK - Letter from arrested PhD student Cihan Erdal

It was on March 31, 2021 when Dara Demiralp sent questions to academic Cihan Erdal via the Express Mail Service. The answers to be given by Erdal would be published as an interview on bianet.

When Demiralp checked the mail tracking system of the state postal service PTT, he saw that the letter containing his questions was delivered to the prison officials on April 2. Unable to get any answers to his questions for two weeks, Demiral called the family of Erdal.

Questions found 'objectionable'

The family said that the letter had not yet been delivered to Cihan Erdal. In response, Demiralp called the administration of the Sincan No. F2 Prison and asked the fate and whereabouts of his letter.

The official of the Prison Letters' Commission gave the following answer: "Objectionable questions were seen in the letter that you had sent. As the letter was found objectionable, it was not delivered to the person."

Dara Demiralp has noted that the introduction part of the letter was given to Erdal, while the part containing the interview questions was omitted. According to Demiralp, the reason behind this incident might be the questions about the LGBTIQ+ movement:

"Turning every person and every group that it sees as the 'other' into a target, the government is now targeting the LGBTIQ+ movement with the hate speech it has recently spread. In addition to your different identities, how would you describe this process as an LGBTIQ+ prisoner?

"The letter that I sent coincided with the period when Melih Bulu was appointed as a trustee-rector to Boğaziçi University. In an attempt to delegitimize the resistance of students at Boğaziçi University in that period, the government spread hate speech about the LGBTIQ+ movement and turned it into a target. That must be why they censored Cihan Erdal."

What happened?

The Ankara Chief Public Prosecutor's Office issued a detention warrant against 82 people in 7 provinces of Turkey over the Kobanî protests from seven years ago. As part of the operations dated September 25, 2021, several Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP) politicians, including academic and LGBTI+ activist Cihan Erdal, were taken into custody.

Cihan Erdal, a PhD student at Carleton University in Canada, was in İstanbul to do research for his PhD thesis.

For two consecutive terms, he was a member of the HDP Party Assembly and Central Executive Committee. Being a member of the LGBTI+ commissions of the HDP and Peoples' Democratic Congress (HDK) for years, Erdal was also one of the founders of the LGBTI+ Peace Initiative.

While he was a member of the HDP Central Executive Committee, he worked for the LGBTI+ rights at the HDP.

After Erdal's arrest, a petition has been launched for Cihan Erdal under the hashtag #freecihanerdal. The petition has been signed by 2,500 academics, including Enzo Traverso, Judith Butler, Etienne Balibar, Noam Chomsky, Silvia Federici, Toni Negri and Wendy Brown.

On January 21, 2021, the Members of the European Parliament debated and voted on an urgency resolution on the human rights situation in Turkey. Focusing on the cases of jailed former Co-Chair of the HDP Selahattin Demirtaş, Osman Kavala, Cihan Erdal and other prisoners of conscience, the MEPs urged for their immediate release. (FD/SD)