This week the Grand Chamber of the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) delivered a landmark
judgment
in the case of prominent Turkish human rights defender, Osman Kavala.
It denounced the bad faith of Türkiye’s authorities, and ruled that Kavala has been unlawfully imprisoned for almost nine years based on a politically motivated trial. Consequently, the court stated that his criminal conviction must be considered null and void and ordered his immediate release. Unfortunately, this may not happen.
Türkiye has already defied two previous binding rulings from the court in his case. And despite pressure from governments, international institutions and campaigners – Amnesty International declared Kavala and his six co-defendants prisoners of conscience in 2022 – Turkish authorities have continued to flagrantly obstruct justice, with very little consequence.
The case is emblematic of how the judiciary has been weaponized in the crackdown against real and perceived dissent. In what became known as the “Gezi Park trial”, Kavala was detained in 2017. Along with his co-defendants, he was first acquitted in February 2020. Soon after, the judges who acquitted them faced disciplinary proceedings. Instead of being released, Osman Kavala then faced new charges based on the same ‘evidence’. Despite the failure of prosecuting authorities to provide substance to the baseless charges laid against him, in April 2022 he was sentenced to aggravated life imprisonment without the possibility of parole. At that point he had already been imprisoned for four and a half years.
This part of a wider ongoing authoritarian crackdown which has seen concerted efforts to crush political opposition, silence dissent, and limit the space for civil society
Stefan Simanowitz, Amnesty International
Others facing politically motivated prosecutions are similarly languishing in prison. Selahattin Demirtaş and Figen Yüksekdağ, former leaders of the People’s Democratic Party, are unlawfu
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