JINHA

TEKİRDAĞ - A Kurdish activist and politician has been charged with supporting an "illegal organization" after she collected aid for children affected by war.

Gülay Adile Ertunç is an activist and provincial co-chair for the Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP) in Tekirdağ, Turkey. Gülay was arrested recently as part of police raids targeting activists that have swept up thousands in Turkey. The charge against her cites her role in forming a solidarity organization in 2012. Gülay remains detained.

The solidarity group that Gülay helped find headed to the largely Kurdish city of Van, Turkey after it was devastated by an earthquake in 2011. Working with local governments in the Turkish city of Izmir, volunteers took earthquake-affected children on a trip to the Aegean Sea to help them overcome their trauma. Gülay spoke to the press about the solidarity project a year after it was founding.

"On the one hand, the Unity Solidarity Group is an agent in the struggle to help all institutions in our country reach a real democracy. On the other hand, in the name of being an immediate balm for wounds and standing up for our people, it's a civil society for realizing social aid projects, organized on Facebook," said Gülay at the time. In 2015, Gülay organized solidarity projects for children in Kobanê affected by war.

Judges in the Tekirdağ Court have counted all the aid that Gülay has collected as criminal, saying that she "collected aid for the families of members of an illegal organization."

(fk/cm)