On the morning of September 11, our friend and comrade, Max Zirngast, was detained in Ankara, Turkey by anti-terror police along with three other activists. Yesterday, he was formally charged with “being a member of the illegal TKP/K” and placed in pre-trial detention — a sort of legal purgatory that can last years.

As regular readers of Jacobin will know, we have coauthored many pieces with Max over the last few years chronicling Turkey’s slide toward authoritarianism under President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. We have never hid our allegiances: for socialism and democracy, against dictatorship and repression.

Max — a native of Austria and a graduate student in political scientist at the Middle East Technical University (ODTÜ) — has been active politically since moving to Turkey in 2015. He’s worked for the election campaign of the HDP (Peoples’ Democratic Party — a pro-Kurdish leftist party), delivered seminars on Marxism, and organized alternative summer schools for children from poor families. In addition to writing for Jacobin, he has been published in several other, mostly leftist, outlets.