Today is May 14, 2026. A full 12 years have passed since the Soma massacre. While the ache of our 301 lives beneath the earth is still fresh, a name who is the voice of those miners, those families, and all the oppressed of this country is being held within four walls, his will usurped: Can Atalay.

The Can Atalay case is not merely a matter of a member of parliament's detention. This case is the litmus test of whether the Republic of Turkey is a "state of law" or "an arena of lawless power struggles."

Can Atalay's return to parliament is not a favor, but a constitutional necessity.

The Constitution's Hotline: Can Atalay and the Recovery of the Rule of Law

The history of Turkish law has witnessed many breaking points; but in no period has the Constitution been deemed so "null and void" by the hand of the judiciary itself. The process embodied in the person of Can Atalay is, rather than a legal crisis, a crisis of the constitutional order. Holding a member of parliament—elected by the people's votes, having received his certificate of election—in a prison cell instead of at the parliamentary rostrum is the suspension of the legal security not only of the people of Hatay but of 85 million.

Legal Exposure: For Whom Is Article 153 of the Constitution?

To understand the lawlessness in the Can Atalay case, one need not be a jurist; it is enough merely to be literate and to apply basic rules of logic. The process has been consciously pushed into a "war of hierarchy" between the highest tiers of the judiciary.

• The Final Ruling of the Constitutional Court: The Constitutional Court (AYM) has twice ruled "rights violation" regarding Can Atalay and decreed that he must be released. Article 153 of the Constitution is clear beyond any doubt: "The decisions of the Constitutional Court are final. They are binding on the legislative, executive, and judicial organs, the administrative authorities, and on real and legal persons."
• A Judicial Coup: The Court of Cassation's refusal to implement the AYM ruling and its filing of a criminal complaint against AYM members is not a difference of legal interpretation, but a "judicial coup." This means breaking the "supreme code" that everyone, from the lowest to the highest unit of the constitutional order, is obliged to obey.
• Membership of Parliament and Immunity: Article 83 of the Constitution regulates legislative immunity. A member of parliament alleged to have committed a crime before or after the election cannot be detained, interrogated, arrested, or tried unless parliament decides otherwise. Can Atalay's situation has been turned into the application of an "exceptional enemy law," pushed entirely outside this protection.

The Organic Intellectual Model: Why Can Atalay?

Why is it Can Atalay, and not others, who is under such a siege? Because Can Atalay is, in Gramsci's term, a complete "organic intellectual." He is a person who uses his knowledge and legal competence not for the survival of capital or the state, but directly for the vital interests of the people.

• The Memory of Soma: Twelve years ago today, it was he who exposed, one by one, the rights of those who remained in the mine, the forgeries in the ventilation reports, and the negligence condoned out of the lust for profit. He is an intellectual who entered the most fortified domains of capital through the law.
• Aladağ and Çorlu: He defended the case of the children who burned in the religious-order dormitories and the lives crushed beneath the rails not with a "supra-political" conscience but with a search for "class justice."
• The Defender of the Public Good: He is not merely a lawyer; he is the deputy of the park, the tree, the water, and the worker. To hold him inside is to break this defensive shield of the people. The processes faced by other rights defenders such as Selçuk Kozağaçlı are also part of this pattern; but Can's situation, being the direct usurpation of the popular will (his membership of parliament), is the system's greatest weak point.

We Expose It: Lawlessness Is a Mode of Governance

Can Atalay not being released is not a technical error, but a conscious choice of governance. This choice aims;

1. to trivialize the people's will to elect their own deputy,
2. to turn the Constitution into "a text of advisory nature,"
3. to send the message "no one can protect you" to every individual seeking their rights.

This understanding of governance, which disregards the legal system, has turned justice into a mechanism of "punishment and hostage-taking." If Can Atalay is not in parliament today, this is not merely the ruling of one chamber of the judiciary; it is the result of the heavy shadow of the executive over the judiciary and of the systematic liquidation undertaken against the constitutional order.

An Appeal to Consciences: Justice Is Everyone's Bread

As a society, we must understand this: Can Atalay's cell is in fact the boundary of Turkey's legal security. As long as the door of that cell is not opened by law, no citizen has any legal guarantee at home, at the workplace, or in the street.

This chain of lawlessness, stretching from Selçuk Kozağaçlı to all other political prisoners, blunts the conscience of society and destroys the belief in justice. Yet justice is the only oxygen that allows a society to live together. To try to leave breathless a jurist who defended the rights of the miners left breathless in Soma is to condemn the future of this country to darkness.

Conclusion: A Call to Truth

Can Atalay is the will of the people of Hatay. Can Atalay is the search for justice of Soma, of Aladağ, of Çorlu, and of Gezi. The place where he should be today is not behind iron bars, but the rostrum of the Grand National Assembly of Turkey, from which he will cry out the people's problems.

This is not a request, but a constitutional command! The law will one day be needed even by those who trample it. But today the real issue is to raise up, together with that trampled law, the dignity and the will of the people. Can Atalay's return to parliament will be not merely the freedom of one person, but the first and most powerful dawn signaling that justice has begun to reign once more on these lands, the unshakeable manifesto of the law's reclaimed victory.

We invite everyone to take part in the exposure of this great lawlessness; to bring to the light of day, with Can Atalay's voice in parliament, the truth they sought to bury beneath the earth in Soma.

Let the Constitution be applied, let Can Atalay return to parliament!

Because Justice Is the People Themselves!