Life imprisonment for Osman Kavala, the activist who took on Erdogan
Osman Kavala (Paris, 1957) was sentenced to life imprisonment by the Istanbul court on the last Monday of April. He was found guilty of plotting a coup against the Erdogan government by instigating the Taksim Gezi Park protests in 2013. The same judicial process has sentenced 7 other people to 18 years in prison for collaborating in the same events. The trial has been highly controversial due to international accusations that it was conducted in an irregular manner and lacked evidence.
Kavala, who has been serving his sentence since 2017 in the high-security prison of Silivri, is one of Turkey's biggest patrons of civic and cultural foundations. Born in Paris into a family with a business background in the tobacco industry, he was educated in the UK and later began his career as an activist in the 1990s. His patronage of organisations fighting for the preservation of environmental space stands out. This profile as an environmental and human rights patron and activist earned him a direct accusation from Erdogan of being part of an international pseudo-plot to destabilise Turkey, orchestrated by George Soros.
Gezi Parkı davasında 18 yıl hapis cezası verilen İBB Şehircilik Proje Koordinatörü Tayfun Kahraman, küçük kızı Vera ile vedalaştı: pic.twitter.com/HE01o23l9l
— İBB Haber (@ibbhabercomtr) April 25, 2022
According to AFP, the 2013 civil protests in which Kavala allegedly participated are the starting point of a much more authoritarian Erdogan government. A facet that would develop much further after the 2016 military coup d'état. In the meantime, the activist and his comrades have become a symbol of resistance against Erdogan's repression and enjoy a great deal of popular and progressive support in the country.
The conviction of Osman Kavala has been repudiated by much of the international community, which considers the trial against the activist, businessman and philanthropist to be motivated by political and repressive ends. In February 2022, the Council of Europe initiated infringement proceedings against Turkey following the ongoing trial of Kavala. The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) ruled that the Istanbul court's prosecution of Osman Kavala had been brought without sufficient evidence to succeed in criminal proceedings.
The ECHR ruled against the Turkish courts' decision, even despite Erdogan's interference through Saadet Yüksel, the judge representing Turkey in Europe's highest judicial body. According to the Nordic Monitor portal, Yüksel has a history of direct clashes with ECHR rulings when they are related to Erdogan or Turkish politics. According to Levent Kenez for Nordic Monitor, Yüksel has gone against his fellow ECtHR judges in the cases of Selahattin Demirtaş, leader of the pro-Kurdish opposition party, and journalists Kadri Gürsel and Ahmet Şık.
The US State Department, through its spokesman Ned Price, has assessed the conviction of the gezi park activists in a statement, saying the US administration is "deeply troubled and disappointed by the court's decision to convict Osman Kavala today. His unjust conviction is incompatible with respect for human rights, fundamental freedoms and the rule of law. The State Department spokesman called on Turkey to release Osman Kavala and his colleagues in accordance with the ECtHR ruling.
Amnesty International has also condemned the trumped-up court ruling and is calling for the acquittal not only of Kavala, but also of all others on trial for the 2013 Gezi Park protests, in which 13 individuals were killed in clashes with Turkish law enforcement. "Since 2017, the prosecuting authorities have been trying to make a crime appear out of thin air, but they have failed time and again. On the contrary, each tortuous twist in this politically motivated prosecution has further exposed the senselessness of the Turkish justice system," reads Amnesty International's statement on its website.
The international community's support for Kavala's case put Erdogan on the ropes. Publicly wounded, the Turkish leader threatened to expel the ambassadors of those countries that took a stand against the fraudulent Istanbul trial. Erdogan finally corrected his shot and withdrew the threat as he weighed the consequences of expelling the ambassadors of the US, France, Germany and the Netherlands.
Erdogan's stubbornness to stick to this path and punish those who civically oppose his government may lead Turkey to face sanctions from the EU, a scenario that the ECHR put on the table when it called for the release of Osman Kavala. It remains to be seen whether in the context of the war in Ukraine, and the intermediary position Turkey has adopted between the parties to the conflict, this is a scenario in which such sanctions could take place.
