I am writing these words to you from my cell in a maximum security “No. 2 F-type” prison in a remote district of Ankara. The sun is beating down on our courtyard. My mind is on the four corners of the globe, with our friends and comrades whose hearts beat together with ours.

We, the members of the HDP (Peoples’ Democratic Party), who ten years ago published a call to action against ISIS’s intended genocide in Kobani, have been paying the price for this sentiment for the past four years in prison. All that just for a tweet. On May 16, the court announced its decision: each of us was sentenced to between twenty and twenty-four years in jail. Our democratic call for protest to stop ISIS’s massacre led to our conviction on the most severe “terror” charges.

The Kobani Conspiracy Trial has become yet another example of the political powers of Turkey’s use of the Anti-Terror Law as an oppressive tool to suppress democratic politics and freedom of expression. I myself have received a sentence of twenty-two and a half years.