Prominent lawyer and human rights defender Eren Keskin

Lawyer Eren Keskin has been a long time human rights defender. Her work, especially during the 90s, helped to document appalling sexual and physical torture cases in Turkish jails. She actively campaigned to challenge militarism and end torture in Turkey, but also to recognize the rights of minorities, especially Kurds. Keskin has been actively involved in the fight for LGBTI+ rights and especially to protect trans-gender people from discrimination. Although not a journalist by profession, faces a total of 129 trials for briefly assuming the post of co-editor in chief of the shuttered Özgür Gündem daily in an act of solidarity with the pro-Kurdish newspaper. Keskin faces life imprisonment in the ongoing case publicly known as the “Özgür Gündem main trial,” in which she is indicted alongside eight other defendants including writer Aslı Erdoğan and linguist Necmiye Alpay, both of whom were on the newspaper’s advisory board, as well as the newspaper’s former Editor in Chief İnan Kızılkaya and its publisher Kemal Sancılı. Keskin was sentenced to a total of 7.5 years in prison along with former Özgür Gündem managing editor in two separate trials on March 29, 2018: one on charges of “denigrating Turkishness, the Republic, and the foundation and institutions of the state” and the other of “insulting the president.” Eren Keskin is one of Turkey's most prominent human rights defenders.