Tuna Altınel

Tuna Altınel is a Turkish mathematician, born February 12, 1966, in Istanbul, who has worked at the University Lyon 1 in France since 1996.

[3] Accused by the Turkish authorities of membership in a terrorist organization, Altınel has been imprisoned since May 11, 2019, at the Kepsut prison in Turkey.

He is joint author with Alexandre Borovik and Gregory Cherlin of a book in which this conjecture is proved in the case of infinite 2-rank, after the development of a body of machinery analogous to certain chapters of finite simple group theory.

He is active in the domain of scientific cooperation with Turkey; in particular, he was an organizer of an international mathematics conference held in Istanbul in 2016 in honor of Alexandre Borovik and Ali Nesin (Leelavati prize winner, 2018).

[14] On February 21, 2019, he acted as translator for a former member of parliament of the Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP) at a public meeting in Lyon, France, in which a documentary on the Cizre massacres was shown, followed by a discussion.

[15] With the resumption of active conflict in August 2015 following a period of relative calm, Altınel reached out to the affected community and began to visit the areas involved in September 2015.

[3] Altınel is one of over 750 signatories from the first group of 1128 such who have been prosecuted or sentenced as individuals for that act under Turkish Anti-Terrorism legislation, through June 2019,[23] on a charge of "propaganda in support of a terrorist organization."

In the second hearing in his case, February 28, 2019, at the 29th Central Criminal Court, Çağlayan Courthouse, Istanbul, Altınel testified that he had aided civilian victims of military operations that took place in the towns placed under military curfew:[24] Since September 2015, I have traveled several times to a number of provinces, including some of those mentioned in the Peace Petition which I signed.

[27] This new charge is "membership in a terrorist organization",[28] based on his participation on February 21, 2019, at a public meeting in Villeurbanne, near Lyon, France.

This meeting was organized by the local Kurdish Society; a documentary was shown on the subject of the Cizre massacres and a discussion was held with a former member of the Turkish parliament, Faysal Sarıyıldız (HDP), now in exile.

"[41] The consul also noted that the PKK remains classified a terrorist group by Ankara, the United States, and the European Union.

[45] On June 11, 2019, the French mathematician and politician Cédric Villani (LREM), Member of Parliament for Essonne's fifth district and Fields medalist, who is a colleague and an outspoken supporter of Altınel,[46] posed a question on the subject during a session of the National Assembly to the Minister for Europe and Foreign Affairs Jean-Yves Le Drian, who stated that the government was committed to doing "everything in its power" in favor of his liberation, notably on the occasion of his June 13 visit to Turkey to consult his counterpart there.