Peace activist, political analyst and conscientious objector Muhammed Cihad Cemre (formerly Saatçioğlu) has been arrested in the western Turkish city of Çanakkale. According to his mother, HDP MP Hüda Kaya, the 37-year-old was taken into custody by an anti-terror police unit at his home in the Bayramiç district early on Saturday morning. So far, she said, no information was available on the background to the detention, as a secrecy order had been imposed on the investigation file. "But government supporters and trolls immediately took action and are carrying out ugly attacks on my family," Kaya wrote on Twitter.

Kaya was referring to a wave of hate, insults and slurs that, according to reports in pro-government newspapers, is rolling over Cemre on the internet. The daily newspaper "Sabah", which is considered an important mouthpiece of the Turkish AKP government, reported that the reason for the detention of the peace activist was a complaint filed with the Central Authority of the Turkish Police (EMG). Apparently, Cemre was denounced there as a "terrorist" who is said to be "regularly" with the PKK in the Qandil Mountains. As proof, the police are said to have received photos showing the activist with people from the PKK leadership. These photos were apparently taken in 2013 during a trip to Southern Kurdistan by Cemre and his mother, Hüda Kaya, and were circulated thousands of times in the media.

This is not the first time that Muhammed Cihad Cemre has been targeted by the Turkish security and prosecution authorities. He has been in prison several times, including in 2011 for alleged PKK membership due to his participation in actions under the motto "Resolution instead of Death - Freedom for Peace". This experience was also the decisive point for the Qandil trip, during which talks were held on ways to peace and a democratic solution to the Kurdish question. At that time, the dialogue process between the Turkish state and the PKK had already taken on concrete features.

In 2019, Muhammed Cihad Cemre was sentenced to fifteen months in prison for "terror propaganda". The sentence stems from his alleged participation in a banned demonstration in Istanbul in November 2016. The background to the protest was a large wave of arrests against the HDP, at the end of which several MPs, including former leaders Figen Yüksekdağ and Selahattin Demirtaş, were imprisoned. Cemre had merely been observing the event organised by the HDP Women's Council in Istanbul's Kadıköy district and stood protectively next to his mother when the mood among the police became increasingly testy and the situation threatened to escalate. As a result, the officers targeted Cemre, beat him up and dragged him into a squad car, where the ordeal continued. In the end, the activist was hospitalised with fractured vertebrae and other fractures. A complaint against his conviction for "alienating the population from military service" is still pending before the Turkish Constitutional Court.