During the FETO terror group’s coup attempt in Turkey on July 15, 2016, Halil Kantarci took to the streets along with millions of Turks to protect his country as he has done his entire life during previous coups
Soon after tweeting, he heard a loud noise outside and learned the government was in danger of falling prey to a military takeover. Paying no heed to his wife's pleas — she wanted him to stay indoors — he ran out on the street to join the resistance.
But Kantarci's short lifetime is representative of Turkey's turbulent past. He came of age as a prisoner of conscience. In 1997, at the age of 16, he received a death penalty on the charges of being associated with the National Youth Foundation, which supported deposed Prime Minister Necmettin Erbakan’s Welfare Party.
With the unfolding of the 1997 post-modern coup, the Turkish military arrested him again, citing the charges of his previous detentions. This time, he was handed a death penalty - though it was later overturned on the grounds of clemency and altered to a 9-year-long prison stay. "Kantarci and other political detainees went on a strike for a month because the authorities were refusing them prayer rugs," Koparan told TRT World.
As the FETO terror network gained ground in Turkey, it began to target its most fervent critics. Kantarci was one of them and his anti-Gulen image landed him on the terror group's hit list, according to Koparan. As his teenage imprisonment disrupted his education, he dropped out of school. "But he did not give up on reading. He read a lot in jail. He was an avid reader of history, philosophy. He improved his writing and oratory skills, which helped him as a social activist.
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