Barış Erhan is a Turkish political refugee who is currently held in Larissa prison, Greece. He faces pending court cases in Turkey because of his political activities. When he arrived on Rhodes island in Greece in the summer of 2024 to seek asylum, he was arrested and charged with having been the operator of the boat on which he travelled. On 11 June 2025 he was unjustly convicted of “smuggling” and sentenced to 74 years and 1 month in prison and a fine of 700,500 euros.
The individuals, collectives, and organisations signed below demand the release of the political refugee Barış Erhan, who fled political persecution in Turkey and was unjustly imprisoned in Greece. Barış is innocent. Because of the mental health issues he faces, as well as the deprivation of his medication during his imprisonment, he is in a particularly vulnerable condition. During his time in prison, he has twice attempted to end his life.
By signing under Barış’s letter below, we express our solidarity and support for his demands for freedom and justice.
Sign here
LETTER OF BARIŞ ERHAN:
I am Barış Erhan. I have been imprisoned in Greece since 29/07/2024. I am writing this letter to explain, as briefly as I can, why I came to Greece, why I am imprisoned and what I have been through here, and to ask for your support.
From 2007 to 2015, I was engaged in revolutionary activity in Turkey with Dev-Lis, LÖB, SGDF, ESP and HDP. Using the rights guaranteed to me by the Turkish constitution and by the international conventions to which Turkey is a party, I took part in demonstrations, marches, rallies, strikes and struggles of resistance.
– I opposed, through street action, almost every measure the government took against the people.
– I opposed the dress code in high schools.
– I opposed compulsory religion classes.
– I demonstrated against FETÖ, then a government ally, because it distributed the university entrance exam questions to its followers.
– I demanded that children of different economic classes receive education of the same quality.
– I protested against the way the Council of Higher Education, established by the fascist military coup of 12 September 1980, was degrading the quality of university education.
– I opposed the transformation of universities into businesses through fees collected from students for various reasons.
– I opposed the conduct of university security, which acted like police, deprived students of their political rights and beat them; I wanted to prevent universities from being turned into prisons.
– I demanded free education.
– I demonstrated against price increases in university canteens and dining halls, and organised occupations and boycotts.
– I fought the antifascist struggle in the universities and in the neighbourhoods.
– I dressed the wounds of comrades whom fascist gangs tried to kill in this struggle.
– I demonstrated against increases in the price of bread, the essential food item for low-income families.
– I demonstrated against municipalities’ increases of water and transportation prices, and organised signature campaigns.
– I supported the strikes of workers who could not get their wages, who were forced into overtime, who were fired for participating in trade unions, or who could not receive their severance pay.
– I protested against murderous capital that exploits workers to death without taking the necessary safety measures and calls it a “work accident”.
– I took part in rallies of workers and public servants.
– I took part in May Day celebrations.
– I opposed the sale of public property.
– I defended the rights of the Kurdish people, whose language, identity and culture have been denied and who have been marginalised and excluded; I stood by them.
– I went to Roboski to protest the massacre of civilians, among them children, by warplanes, and to offer my condolences to the families.
– I tried to be a voice for revolutionaries who were unjustly held in prison, and demanded their freedom.
– I belong to the Alevi cultural-religious community. To honour the memory of the Alevis who were burned alive in the Madımak Hotel in Sivas, Turkey, in 1992, and to condemn the murderers, I demonstrated in front of the Madımak Hotel on the anniversary of the massacre.
– I took part in demonstrations marking the anniversaries of almost every massacre against workers, the oppressed and revolutionaries in Turkey and around the world, so that they would not be forgotten.
– I tried to be a child to the Saturday Mothers, who search for the bones of revolutionaries who were tortured to death and disappeared in custody.
– I opposed Turkey’s interventions in the Middle East.
– I opposed NATO’s actions of turning Turkey into the gendarme of the region, and demonstrated in front of the NATO base in Kürecik.
– I demonstrated against ISIS.
– I buried friends killed in ISIS massacres.
– I honoured the memory of those who died fighting against ISIS.
– During the Gezi uprising, I did not go home even once; I gave my support.
– I opposed the fact that millions of workers work for the benefit of a handful of rich people; I demanded socialism.
Although everything I did within all these demands and actions was legal, countless court cases were opened against me. In some of them I was acquitted. In the cases in which I was convicted, my imprisonment was deferred and the trial continues in higher courts. I still have one case at first instance that has been pending for 10 years. In this case, too, although I merely exercised my lawful right to protest and there is no evidence of weapons or any illegal activities, my lawyer’s assessment is that I will certainly be convicted on charges of “membership of a terrorist organisation,” “committing crimes on behalf of an organisation,” and “violating the law on assemblies.” My lawyer, too, was recently convicted of “membership of a terrorist organisation.”
Both my pending case and my active cases in the higher courts was putting constant pressure on my freedom. For this reason, I stopped active political participation in 2015 and decided to pursue a passive struggle. After 2015 I worked in factories for a while. I was subjected to mobbing because of my unionising activity or my political past, and I left that job. I worked in bars for a while. Together with other bar workers, we fought for our rights under the umbrella of the “Café-Bar Workers’ Association.” The police would visit some of the bars where I worked, and I would be fired by the owners the same day.
At the same time, when the great earthquake struck Turkey on 6 February 2023, the state was not sending help to the province of Hatay. I called my friends from Hatay and confirmed it. With the limited means I had, I took a loan from the bank, bought an old car and went to Hatay. I worked in the ruins for weeks.
Later I changed sector and started working in the film industry as an assistant set designer. I had the opportunity to work on many projects. Sometimes TV series were filmed near or inside palaces or police stations. During these shootings the police would collect the crew’s identity documents and check their criminal records, and because of my pending cases, I would then be fired with absurd excuses. Because work in film and television is project-based, I would go back to working in bars until a new project came along. One day the owner of the bar where I worked hit me and stole my phone. I went to get a medical certificate for the assault in order to file a complaint. But the police officers who were friends of my employer interfered with my medical examination, and the doctor wrote a report without even properly examining me. My complaint was turned into a mutual complaint and the case was shelved. Moreover, I was never paid the wages I was owed.
After this incident, intelligence officers stopped me and told me “we are watching you.” They said they would solve the problems I had with my former employer, that they would also help me with my other cases, that if I wanted to open a business they would help me with that, too. In return, they wanted me to give a false testimony. I refused. I was no longer the fiery revolutionary I had once been, but I had not lost my class consciousness. I could not betray my past, nor the comrades who had fallen fighting in that past. Most importantly, my past was what has made me who I am. I could not betray myself. But it was clear that the pressure would increase. For a long time my lawyer had been telling me, about my pending case, that I would certainly be convicted and that I should think about seeking asylum.
I had applied for a Greek visa in the past, but it had been rejected. I had no choice left but to go by irregular means. After asking around, I found the number of a smuggler. I exchanged messages and spoke on the phone with the smuggler, and he invited me to Izmir. We met in person; he asked me for 4,500 euros. I did not want to give it right away, so I entrusted the amount to a mutual acquaintance; it would be given to the smuggler as soon as I arrived in Greece. He kept me waiting in Izmir for some time. During this period we often exchanged messages on WhatsApp about the departure date.
At the end of July he said we would set off, and he picked me up from the place where I was staying. Because I had a police record and would be arrested if I was identified, he brought me to the boat before the other migrants. The captain who would operate the boat was a 20-year-old Syrian. The captain considered the boat too big; he said he had only smuggled people with smaller boats in the past and could not handle this one. They spent the whole afternoon at the other end of the boat trying to persuade him. He must have been persuaded by the evening, because we set off towards dawn. My hair was in dreadlocks, I had a long, well-kept beard, and I had tattoos on my body. Because of this, the smugglers told me that I had to sunbathe on the deck like a tourist, otherwise the trip was off. I had no choice but to agree. The captain sometimes gave the helm to young Arabs and made announcements in Arabic on the boat. After each announcement the young men shouted “ana al-arab.” Everyone on the boat except me was Syrian. I learned later that this phrase meant “we are Arabs.”
The captain asked me several times to take the helm; I refused, saying I did not know how to operate it. Other young men also often took the helm. Around noon the waves grew stronger, some people were vomiting, others lay face down on the deck making strange noises. The water sometimes came up onto the deck. There was general chaos on the boat; some wanted to turn back, some even called the Turkish coast guard. I was affected by this chaos, too. In that moment the captain said, “hold the helm for a minute, I’ll be right back after I get something.” I was forced to hold the helm for less than a minute. Because the chaos continued, he also asked me for the petrol can, and I gave it to him. He asked me to press a button, and I pressed it. The captain had a phone with which he followed the route, and because the waves were shaking the boat, he asked me to hold it steady, and I did. I did all this without expecting anything in return, simply to survive. The captain had hesitated from the start to operate the boat; if I had not done what he asked, the boat might very well have sunk.
We finally arrived in Greece. A Greek coast guard boat picked us up and transferred us to a larger vessel. I certainly had not expected to be welcomed with flowers when I arrived in Greece — I had thought that I might face racism, that I might struggle financially for a while, but that I would find some way to manage. What had never crossed my mind was that I would be arrested. And for a crime I did not commit.
Before I even set foot on land, I was handcuffed and put in a police vehicle. I was then thrown into the Rhodes custody cell — a place without sun, without ventilation, that smelled like a henhouse, that seemed to belong to another century, and where there were cockroaches the size of a mouse. I was held in Rhodes for almost a month. I gave statements to the police and to the prosecutor several times. Each time I said that I was neither the captain nor the smuggler, and I asked for my WhatsApp communications on my phone to be examined. I said I had come to seek asylum, but this was not taken into account. Later, through my lawyer, I asked for my WhatsApp communications to be examined, but the prosecutor’s office refused, saying the investigation would take too long.
I learned that four of the Syrian refugees on the boat had testified that I was the captain, and that one of these four had also named the real captain. I understood that the Syrian captain had stirred up nationalist feelings and gathered false testimonies against me. This obviously suited the Rhodes police, since they designated me as the perpetrator in an open file without conducting any substantial investigation.
I had always fought the antifascist struggle. But, while I was fleeing the state repression that this very antifascist struggle had brought upon me, I found myself facing racism from Syrians on that boat. The statements the real captain gave to police, prosecutor, and the court were all different from one another. In fact, before the trial he had declared, using forged documents, that he was 16 years old, and only a forensic examination revealed his real age.
After my initial arrest, I remained in Rhodes for almost a month, after which I was transferred to Korydallos prison in Athens. In Greek prisons, inmates are not separated according to the type of crime; murderers, smugglers and thieves all end up in the same cell. Because the prisons house people of many different nationalities, detainees and convicts are grouped into cells by nationality. In the cell where I was held, I lived next to people who had committed many crimes that I would never approve of. The official capacity of the cell was 14 people, but because there were many more of us, we put mattresses on the floor so that 8 people fit on the floor. We put four mattresses in the front and four in the back, stuck to each other, so that there was no space left for anyone to step on the floor. There were times when more than 12 people slept on those 8 mattresses on the floor, lying almost on top of each other. I slept like this on the floor for months. Whether on the floor or on a bunk, the cell was always overcrowded.
Constant loud shouting, absurd conversations, people threatening to kill or torture each other or people outside the prison — this was simply normal in the cell. Drug use was extremely widespread. Someone shouting incoherently in the middle of the cell for no reason was considered normal. One television played absurd music at full volume, while another played TV series at full volume that not even those watching them could bear. Amid all this noise, people shouted loudly about the crimes they had committed in the past and about their plans for future crimes. This often went on until 2 am. I personally never got involved in a fight, but around me there were constantly fights of every level. Guards were taken hostage; knives and pistols were found in the cells. I even saw a bloody knife fight over a drug sale that lasted three hours — not only I, but the guards watched it, too. The guards first locked the corridor where the fight was taking place, out of fear, and then locked the stairs so that no one could come down from above. When the fight ended on its own, they put everyone back in their cells and locked them in.
I have bipolar disorder. Thinking that I would not have access to medication in a refugee camp, I had brought with me medication for at least six months. When I entered prison they took it all, and gave me back only two boxes of a medicine called “Diderol,” which regulates the heart rhythm. My doctor had prescribed it for my anxiety, and I took half a dose a day. I never used it in prison. On its own it was not an effective medicine for my condition. The prison, for its part, did not recognise my illness and did not enable my treatment. I constantly had crises, big and small. By May I reached a point where I could not take it anymore. The medicine’s instructions said not to take it on an empty stomach and not to exceed 4 doses a day. I ate nothing all day, and at 3 in the morning I watered the mint and peppers grown at the window, and then took the two boxes of medicine they had given me. I woke up early the next morning with an unbearable need to urinate. At first I was disappointed that I had not died. Then I tried to find a solution for the need to urinate. I thought of wetting myself, but the cheap foam mattresses would pass it straight through to the bunk below. I thought of crawling to the toilet and then waiting quietly for death in my bed. But after a few steps I fainted, and I opened my eyes in hospital. The medicine slows the heart rate and lowers blood pressure; I probably fainted because my blood pressure dropped.
I stayed in hospital for about a week. There, the police tried to force me to sign documents. I said I would sign if my lawyer approved, once she had been informed. Not only did they not inform my lawyer, but they also prevented her from reaching me. At the same time, people in the corridor were constantly talking about me in Turkish; when I answered in Turkish, they told me in Greek “we don’t understand Turkish.” I was under psychological torture. Whenever the psychiatric team came to examine me, the police created problems and prevented the examination. When my blood pressure reached 9 over 6, they hastily took me out of the hospital.
My trial took place on 11 June 2025. We submitted to the court a voluminous file, which contained:
– The receipt for the sum of money I sent to the smuggler
– Documents from my pending political case in Turkey
– Press articles about me
– My social insurance documents proving that I was working and earning money legally in Turkey
– Letters of recommendation from comrades who were tried in the same cases and whose asylum in Europe had been approved
– Letters of recommendation from my employers and colleagues
– Photographs of me at work
– My IMDb page
– Excerpts from the credits of the series I worked on, in which my name was mentioned
– The IMDb pages of the friends who gave recommendations
We also brought witnesses:
– My lawyer from Turkey
– My family
– Comrades who were tried in the same cases and whose asylum in Europe had been approved
– A professor who works on migration in Athens
The court briefly heard only my lawyer from Turkey and the professor. At the same time, it allowed the Syrian captain’s lawyer to examine my witnesses like a prosecutor. My own defence was cut off halfway, and I was forcibly removed from the stand. The file we submitted was never opened. For holding the helm for less than a minute so as not to sink, I was sentenced to 74 years and 1 month in prison and a fine of 700,500 euros. The real Syrian captain was sentenced to 69 years, but because he was 20 years old, the sentence was reduced to 8 years. As I write this, he is probably either walking free in Greece, or has been deported.
During the trial, the interpreter appointed by the court did not explain to me what was happening; I learned my sentence only weeks later, when I had already arrived in prison. I could not bear receiving such a heavy sentence for a crime I did not commit, and in September 2025, I cut my throat with a razor. Again, I did not die. The doctor who examined me said I was very lucky — was I lucky, or unlucky? I did not know.
When I set off for Greece, it never crossed my mind that I would live through something like this. In Turkey, drinking ouzo, I used to think that I would listen to that song by Sagopa, “I hear love from the opposite shore, from the other side of the strait.” I thought of the sirtaki from the film Zorba. I hoped I would meet someone who listened to Eleni Karaindrou before going to sleep.
In the end, I am writing this letter from Larissa prison. I came to Greece to seek asylum. I did not bring state secrets by helicopter; I did not smuggle capital out of my country. I came with a camping backpack and 60 euros. I hoped for nothing more. I am calling out to you from behind the borders; I am calling out to you from right beside you, from behind a prison wall: I am a revolutionary, a socialist, an artist, a bartender, and much more — but never, ever a smuggler. If I had wanted to make easy money, I would have accepted the police’s offer in Turkey. I left because I did not sell my honour. Now I am accused of a dishonourable act. I want my freedom. I want my freedom, which is my right as surely as my mother’s milk. To you, I say the words of Che, who died far from the land where he was born:
SOLIDARITY IS THE TENDERNESS OF PEOPLES.
We remind our readers that publication of articles on our site does not mean that we agree with what is written. Our policy is to publish anything which we consider of interest, so as to assist our readers in forming their opinions. Sometimes we even publish articles with which we totally disagree, since we believe it is important for our readers to be informed on as wide a spectrum of views as possible.