Osman Kavala
Court confirms verdict against Turkish cultural promoters
Osman Kavala has been in prison since 2017. photo
© Wiktor Dabkowski/dpa/Archive
Osman Kavala has been in prison since 2017. According to a ruling by Turkey’s Supreme Court of Appeal, he must stay there forever.
Turkey’s Supreme Court of Appeal has handed down the verdict against the imprisoned Turkish cultural promoter Osman Kavala sentenced to life imprisonment. This was reported by the state news agency Anadolu. Kavala (65), who has been in prison since 2017, was sentenced to life imprisonment in April 2022 for attempted coup in connection with the anti-government Gezi protests in 2013.
The court separately confirmed 18 years in prison for aiding and abetting four other suspects, including lawyer Can Atalay, it said. Atalay was elected as a member of parliament in May and was unable to leave prison to take his oath in parliament. At the same time, the court dropped charges against three other people, two of whom were already in custody. They are expected to be released, Anadolu wrote.
The verdict against the cultural promoter Kavala provoked sharp international criticism. Chancellor Olaf Scholz (SPD) described it as a “devastating signal for Turkish civil society”. Kavala comes from an entrepreneurial family and supported numerous civil society projects in Turkey. He is the founder of the organization Anadolu Kültür.
Thursday’s decision was “an egregious abuse of the justice system,” wrote Emma Sinclair-Webb, deputy director of Human Rights Watch Europe and Central Asia, on the X (formerly Twitter) platform.