A top Turkish human rights activist was freed today after spending over a year in prison, spurring cautious hope that Turkey’s financial woes sharpened by a row with the United States may force it to ease pressure on dissent so as to win back support from Europe.
Taner Kilic, the Turkish chair of Amnesty International, was arrested in June 2017 along with 22 lawyers over alleged links to Fethullah Gulen, the Islamic cleric accused of plotting to violently overthrow Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. The case is among a slew of flimsily evidenced prosecutions of dissidents in the wake of the abortive July 2016 coup. Kilic’s trial was being closely monitored by the European Union.
