This 16-Year-Old Was Jailed For Criticizing Turkey’s President.

        For taking part in a protest, Mehmet Altunses was pulled out of school and put in solitary confinement for two days. Until about a week ago, Mehmet Emin Altunses was a run-of-the-mill teenager. He likes computer games, soccer and hanging out with friends at cafés where they play Turkish folk music.
But now Mehmet has become a symbol of Turkey’s riding tide of authoritarianism, and President Tayyip Erdogan’s intolerance for criticism—even if it happens to come from a 16-year-old.
          Mehmet goes to vocational high school in Konya, a city in Turkey’s heartland. After school one day in late December, he got together with a group of friends and took part in a street protest against Erdogan’s Islamist-based rule, which Mehmet thinks is ruining secular education. There were around 50 to 60 people at the protest, which lasted around 20 minutes. Other than that, it was uneventful.
         Protests have become an increasingly common feature of Turkish life over the past 18 months, as Erdogan has scored victories in local and presidential elections, but also cracked down on opponents and provoked complaints from the U.S. and EU after his government derailed a corruption inquiry by prosecutors,but as Mehmet was about to learn, demonstrating against Turkey’s strongman can be a dangerous business—thousands of people, including students, are being prosecuted for taking part in 2013 mass protests.
        Those demonstrations were sparked by plans to demolish Istanbul’s central Gezi Park, but soon became about Erdogan’s rule itself.