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Talk of Kurdish weddings code for terror plots, Turkish prosecutors say

The Turkish justice system is overwhelmed with thousands in prison for such dubious crimes as texting about weddings.

Chris McGrath/Getty Images
Groom Murat Targut and bride Yasmin walk down a near-empty Istiklal Street to take wedding photos after the start of a three-week nationwide coronavirus lockdown on April 29, 2021, in Istanbul, Turkey. — Chris McGrath/Getty Images

Justice remains elusive for Metin Kilicaslan, a wedding singer from the mainly Kurdish province of Siirt in southeast Turkey who’s been languishing in a Turkish prison since 2015 on charges of membership of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK).

He tracks his days spent in jail by his daughter’s birthdays. She was newly born when Kilicaslan was hauled away into the sort of legal inferno that has beset Turkey’s increasingly politicized, massively overburdened and cruelly arbitrary judicial system.

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