Turkey summoned to release businessman Osman Kavala

The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) ordered Turkey on Tuesday (December 10th) to release " at once " the patron and businessman Osman Kavala, held in solitary confinement for over two years for having, according to Turkish prosecutors, attempted to "Topple the state". Believing to be unfairly incarcerated, the sponsor appealed to the European Court in June 2018, not only ensuring that his pre-trial detention violated his right to life and liberty, but was motivated by political considerations, citing Articles 5 and 18 of the European Convention on Human Rights.

The Strasbourg-based ECHR found that Turkey had violated the accused's right to liberty and security. quoting "The lack of reasonable suspicion that the applicant committed an offense", the judges called on Turkey to "Take all necessary measures" to end his detention. The Turkish government did not answer. At present, Osman Kavala is still being held in the Silivri high security prison on the outskirts of Istanbul, alongside the country's biggest terrorists, such as Abdulkadir Macharipov, the alleged perpetrator attack on Reina nightclub on New Year's Eve 2017 in Istanbul (thirty-nine dead, seventy-nine wounded), whose sentence was not always pronounced.

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The decision of the Court concerning Osman Kavala could remain a dead letter. This is the second time that European judges have concluded that Turkey has violated Article 18 (limitation of the use of restrictions on rights and freedoms) of the European Convention on Human Rights. On 9 July, they felt that the rights of Selahattin Demirtas, the former co-chairman of the People's Democratic Party (HDP, Prokurde), imprisoned since 2016, had been violated, and that the defendant had to be released. Their decision was largely ignored. As a founding member of the Council of Europe, a signatory to the European Convention on Human Rights, Ankara does not consider itself visibly more bound by the decisions of the ECHR. This is particularly the case since its judicial system sank into arbitrariness after the failed putsch of July 15, 2016, when massive purges were ordered by the political power, which brought justice to pace.

Judicial hardship

Arrested in November 2017, Osman Kavala has been held in Silivri since his arrest. The Turkish justice accuses him of having organized and financed the events of the Gezi Park, in Istanbul, in 2013, which he denies. He faces life imprisonment. Severely repressed at the time, this mobilization, born out of the challenge of an urban development project in the heart of Istanbul, had quickly spread to several cities and regions of the country, establishing itself as the largest protest movement against Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan since he came to power in 2003. In the indictment, the prosecutor "Gezi movement" as an operation mounted from abroad for the purpose of "Put Turkey on your knees". Several European diplomats appear as alleged accomplices of a conspiracy straight from the imagination of prosecutors, so the charges are sewn white thread.

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The American billionaire of Hungarian origin George Soros is described there as having organized the demonstrations of Gezi. An interpretation supported by President Erdogan who, along with his entire government of 2013, was a civil party at the sponsor's trial. "Who is behind Kavala? The famous Hungarian Jew Soros, a man who encourages people to divide nations and dismember them ", he said, in November 2018. Hard to understand the reasons for the judicial persecution against the Turkish businessman, a good family intellectual, born in Paris and educated in Manchester, who put his fortune and his life in the service of cultural dialogue. His case is emblematic of the decline of the rule of law in Turkey.

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