A Turkish citizen was detained for criticising the AKP government's Afrin offensive after a social media post citing an anti-war poem by communist poet Bertolt Brecht

While Turkey’s offensive goes on in Syria’s Afrin district, the Justice and Development Party (AKP) government-led police continue to detain citizens for criticizing the offensive via their social media posts as a citizen was absurdly taken into custody since he shared a poem by Bertolt Brecht.

Anti-terror police officers raided some houses and seized all the digital devices during an operation in the northern city of Sinop on the pretext of finding "evidence". One of the detainees talked to soL News, saying that he was detained for his social media post citing an anti-war poem by German communist poet Bertolt Brecht since the prosecution office showed the poem excerpt as criminal evidence.

The detained citizen added that an image of a white dove was also shown as criminal evidence during the prosecution interrogation. However, the anti-war citizen just shared a famous poem with such hashtags as #NotoWar and #NoToAfrinWar.

The poem by Bertolt Brecht, the famous Marxist intellectual who is known as the main proponent of the epic/dialectical theatre genre in the 20th century, shared by the detained citizen reads, "War is not a natural law, and peace is not granted as a gift to the people, it is necessary to rise against the murderers for peace against war, for saying, 'No, we shall live'."

Since the Turkish Armed Forces’ military offensive was launched on January 20, 449 citizens have been detained around the country for their anti-war social media posts. The pro-government media outlets report the reasons of detainments as "publicly provoking hatred or hostility", "defamation of President" and "terror propaganda".