Μake us preferred on Google The European Court of Human Rights has ordered Turkey to free Osman Kavala “as soon as possible,” ruling that his life sentence is “null and void.”
The court also ordered Turkey to pay Kavala, a philanthropist and publisher convicted of “attempting to overthrow the government,” more than €110,000.
Kavala, who became a symbol of the pursuit and repression of civil society in Turkey, was arrested in October 2017 and has been held at Istanbul’s high-security Silivri prison.
He was initially prosecuted over his support for the 2013 protests against the government of Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, who was prime minister at the time. Turkish authorities have since piled up numerous charges against him, which he denies.
After an earlier release request went to the European Court of Human Rights, Kavala was acquitted of the charges in 2020. But he was immediately rearrested on new charges and sentenced to life in prison in 2022.
Turkey was found to have violated Kavala’s freedom of expression, freedom of assembly, and his rights to liberty and a fair trial. Turkey was also found to have subjected him to inhumane and degrading treatment.
The Strasbourg court, ruling 15 votes to 2, found that Kavala’s prosecution, detention, and conviction were driven mainly by an unacknowledged aim: punishing him for his role in the Gezi Park protests and his stance as a human rights defender, while also silencing him.
Pointing to serious flaws in the judicial proceedings against Kavala, the court found that Ankara’s refusal to release him despite earlier rulings undermines not only public trust in the rule of law but also the constitutional order itself. It said the deficiencies identified in the case amounted to a deep shift in the legal framework under which his case was being handled, and that, taken together, these breakdowns struck at the very core of his right to a fair trial.
