The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) has ordered Turkey to immediately release Osman Kavala, an activist and philanthropist who has been detained in prison for almost a decade. Kavala was sentenced to life behind bars in 2022 for charges related to nationwide protests in 2013 and a failed coup attempt three years later. Since his initial arrest and detention in 2017, rights groups and Kavala himself have maintained that the charges against him are politically motivated.
The ECHR on Tuesday ruled that his continued detention was unlawful and that his rights to a fair trial, freedom of expression and association had been violated. "The measures taken against the applicant... had been predominantly motivated by an ulterior purpose, namely, to punish him for his role in the Gezi Park demonstrations and for expressing his opinions as a human rights defender, and to silence him," the court said in its ruling, external. The court also found that Kavala's aggravated life sentence amounted to "inhuman and degrading treatment".
Rights advocates and opposition groups say President Recep Tayyip Erdogan's government has increasingly weaponised the judiciary to target critics and rivals. The court said Kavala's case had exposed a "systemic problem" in Turkey of the "detention and prosecution of political opponents, human rights defenders and journalists", adding that there were "structural shortcomings which affected the guarantees of independence and impartiality of the judiciary". The Turkish government has insisted the country's courts are independent.
Turkish activist sentenced to life in prison The case that set Turkey on collision course with the West Kavala, 68, became a symbol of a government crackdown on civil society in Turkey following his arrest in October 2017. He and others were accused of orchestrating and financing anti-government protests in 2013, which started in Istanbul's Gezi park before spreading across Turkey. The demonstrations posed the first serious challenge to the rule of Erdogan, who was Turkey's dominant prime minister at the time and became its directly elected president the following year.
Human rights group Amnesty International says prosecutors falsely alleged that the Gezi park protests were an attempt to overthrow the government. In 2019, the ECHR demanded Kavala's immediate release, describing his detention as arbitrary and politically motivated. Turkey did not implement the ruling.
He was initially acquitted in February 2020 but within hours was rearrested on new charges of being part of a failed military coup in 2016. His acquittal over the Gezi Park protests was overturned in January 2021, and he was sentenced to life in prison in April 2022 - a conviction now declared "null and void" by the ECHR. Reacting to the latest ECHR ruling, Amnesty International's Eve Geddie said: "This obstruction of justice must end.
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