Last week, Turkey – led by President Recep Tayyip Erdogan – voted to pass legislation that will allow around 45,000 prisoners to be temporarily released in a bid to halt cases of the deadly infection killing those behind bars. But human rights groups are gravely concerned that the new measures exclude those who were “arbitrarily detained pending trial or serving sentences following unfair trials under Turkey’s overly broad anti-terrorism laws which facilitate incarceration for exercise of free speech”. The plan was to stop the spread of the virus sweeping through Turkey’s prison system by lessening the overcrowding within facilities.