"The youth has had enough ... We are ready to go on the streets to regain our freedoms."

Suffice to say, these words did not go down well with Turkey’s Erdogan regime. The LGBTQ+ youth activist who spoke them in Strasbourg at a meeting organised by Europe’s main human rights body, the Council of Europe, was on the night of August 5 detained on arrival from France at Ankara's Esenboga Airport.

Activist Enes Hocaogullari, 23, was taken into custody pending trial on charges of "publicly disseminating misleading information" and "inciting hatred and enmity," according to a court document seen by Reuters.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan's government has since March stepped up an operation, involving hundreds of detentions and formal arrests, that is widely seen as aimed at sidelining his main political rival, Ekrem Imamoglu, and shutting down any threat posed by his party, the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), to Erdogan rule.

Hocaogullari gave a speech in March at the Council of Europe event criticising police violence and detentions plus democratic backsliding in Turkey.

The Ankara Chief Public Prosecutor's Office has reportedly cited his remarks about detained opposition mayors, including Imamoglu, the mayor of Istanbul, as the basis for the case it has opened against him.

The Council of Europe rights body's congress of local authorities said on August 6 that the charges against Hocaogullari amounted to a reprisal for his words and called for his immediate release.

"The Congress has already expressed deep concern about the state of democracy in Turkey and called on the Turkish authorities to stop prosecuting and detaining elected representatives from opposition parties," Congress president Marc Cools said in a statement. "This new attack on a youth delegate for having legitimately exercised the right to express their views in a pluralistic public debate, is scandalous and unacceptable."

Turkey is a member of the Council of Europe but is known for disregarding its criticisms. Membership of the organisation is seen as a necessary stepping stone on the way to European Union membership.

The governments of Western countries have come under fire for a weak and “low volume” response to the jailing of Imamoglu and the Ankara regime’s ongoing operation against the opposition.