A popular Twitter user posting under the name “JeansBiri” tweeted on Friday that a man who was arrested last November for allegedly starting a hashtag from his account about a call from a pro-Justice and Development Party (AKP) figure for the arming of party members is not him.
In tweets after an absence of almost a year, JeansBiri said Turkish authorities arrested the wrong person and that he feels sorry about it.
The last tweet JeansBiri posted was on Oct. 26 of last year, days before a Twitter user who was identified as Ahmet Kemal Aydoğdu was detained on the grounds that he sought to provoke society with posts from the JeansBiri Twitter account with the hashtag “AKsilahlanma” (AKarmament), including a reference to the AKP.
He was arrested on Nov. 22 by a Turkish court in Gaziantep province in southeastern Turkey after 25 days in detention. He is accused of membership in an armed terrorist organization.
The chairman of the pro-AKP Ottoman Hearths 1453, Emin Canpolat, had previously called on all supporters of the AKP and President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan to take up arms in the event of a second coup attempt in Turkey.
Turkey experienced a failed coup on July 15, 2016 that claimed the lives of 249 people and injured more than a thousand others.
“This is an announcement to all acting with us. Take up arms for the homeland, for our flag and for Erdoğan,” Canpolat wrote on his personal Twitter account.
His message drew support from AKP trolls on Twitter, and the hashtag “AKsilahlanma” (AKarmament) was a trending topic for many hours.
Since then several AKP officials have been talking about arming their members in the event of attacks against them.
The alleged owner of JeansBiri was indicted along with 18 other suspects as part of a trial of Cumhuriyet daily journalists and executives who were arrested in November 2016 on charges of supporting several terrorist organizations.
The suspects face charges of aiding the terrorist Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), far-left Revolutionary People’s Liberation Party/Front (DHKP/C) and the faith-based Gülen movement, which the government accuses of masterminding the failed coup last year.
According to the T24 website Aydoğdu, who denied owning the Twitter account, was a teacher at a Gülen-linked school in Gaziantep before it was shut down by government decree following the failed coup.