Our comrade and coauthor, Jacobin contributor Max Zirngast, has now been in Turkish custody for more than a month. Authorities still haven’t brought a formal indictment against him, yet Max is being held in a high-security prison — Sincan-2, about forty miles west of Ankara — and experiencing severe restrictions on his written correspondence, his visits from friends and family, and his ability to conduct his usual journalism and research.

As with other jailed dissidents in Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s Turkey, it is unclear when the prosecutor will bring formal charges against Max or when his trial will begin. Applying domestic and international pressure is therefore extremely important — otherwise his pre-trial detention could stretch on indefinitely.

Max, an Austrian national who’s lived in Turkey for the last three years, was arrested in the early morning hours of September 11 by Turkish anti-terror police. Authorities are accusing him of “being a member of the illegal TKP/K” — a patently absurd charge that is being leveled simply because Max has written about, and organized against, Turkey’s authoritarian turn under Erdoğan.