Twenty Turkish lawyers have been put on trial and are in jail after being convicted of up to 18 years in prison. Several of them are lawyers I know. President Erdoğan has stepped up his crackdown on anti-government forces since the 2016 coup attempt, and many lawyers have been arrested for belonging to terrorist organizations that oppose the government. One of those lawyers, Ebru Timtik, went on a hunger strike to protest the unfair trial and died on August 27, 2020, about six months later.
In 2018 I went to Istanbul to attend a court hearing. It was a big trial with over 100 people in the courtroom alone, with 20 indicted lawyers being defended by another 50 of their colleagues, and another 50 court police officers surrounding them. I witnessed violence from the police officers in the courtroom just for handing over documents to a fellow lawyer, and the trial was full of hostility towards the indicted lawyers. He was even restricted from arguing his case in the middle of the trial.
The prosecuted lawyers were equated with the ideology of their clients, even though they were only doing their job to protect their clients' interests. UN principles also stipulate that a lawyer's duties should not make him or her identical to his or her clients or their beliefs (Article 18 of the Basic Principles on the Role of Lawyers). If such an argument were to be accepted, lawyers would not be able to defend anyone. It's the same argument that was used in the Aum Trials when people were considered to be Aum believers if they took on criminal defense work.
I believe that the deceased Ebru was protesting against such a trial and wanted to show her protest with her death. I can't really imitate him, but I know how she felt.