...the only place on the face of the earth that misses the Ottoman Empire...has been acquitted, his lawyer said on Wednesday.
Max Zirngast,
| ...a Communist journalist who just happens to be a friend of the Kurds — the PKK, to be exact... |
The 30-year-old was also a political science masters student at Middle East Technical University in Ankara at the time of his arrest.
| Why would an Austrian study PoliSci in Turkey instead of back home? |
"A verdict was received that Max did not take part in any illegal activity or any activity constituting a crime," his lawyer Murat Yilmaz told AFP.
He said two
Zirngast had been free pending the latest hearing on Wednesday but had been barred from leaving Turkey.
He rejected the charges and denied the TKP/Kivilcim group even exists.
In an opinion piece for the Washington Post last year, Zirngast wrote that his arrest was "a perverse confirmation of the authoritarianism I've spent the past several years chronicling and opposing".
He also criticised the attempt to "silence the entire democratic opposition in Ankara".
Zirngast had also published articles on the outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), which has waged an insurgency against the