Turkish culture promoter Osman Kavala, who has been imprisoned for four and a half years, has been sentenced to “life imprisonment” for “attempting to overthrow the government”. This form of imprisonment replaces the death penalty in Turkey. In a political trial that is epoch-making for Turkey, after three years of negotiations in various courts, the verdicts were handed down in an Istanbul criminal court on Monday. Kavala, the most prominent of 17 accused, was accused of allegedly funding the 2013 Gezi protests. Kavala has always denied this. He was acquitted of the allegation of alleged agent activity in connection with the attempted coup in 2016. Several of the other defendants, including urban planners, artists and lawyers, were sentenced to 18 years in prison and arrested in the courtroom. The judgments are not yet final.
They are another serious setback for democracy in Turkey. Kavala was a cooperation partner of many European cultural institutions, including the Goethe Institute. He was arrested in October 2017, the trial only began in June 2019 and after an initial acquittal in early 2020, without Kavala being released from custody, it was reopened and restructured several times. It was viewed as a political process from the start. The charges had triggered diplomatic upsets between Ankara and several Western countries, including Germany. The process has also led to an ongoing Council of Europe exclusion procedure against Turkey.
The trial was seen as an acid test for the rule of law in Turkey under President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. Until the verdict was announced, the supporters of the accused had hoped for an acquittal. In view of the deeply politicized process, it was argued that Kavala’s release would show that Turkey wanted to reorient itself towards Europe in the wake of the Ukraine war.
The 64-year-old businessman and patron of culture Kavala, who on the last day of the trial was only connected via video from the high-security prison in Silivri, said in his closing remarks: “The allegations against me serve to discredit the political will of the millions of citizens who participate in the Gezi protests.” He also again denied claims that he was one of the main backers of the failed 2016 military coup. “The claim that an individual like me played a crucial role in the July 15 coup attempt has never been challenged by the judiciary,” said Kavala. “In my view, this is a breach of duty and evidence of an unprofessional investigation.” Kavala’s lawyers pointed out that the court never asked the accused where he was on the day of the attempted coup, nor if he had ever been to Gezi Park.
Erdoğan had publicly described Kavala as a “terrorist”.
One of the most important defendants alongside Kavala, the former chairman of the Istanbul Chamber of Architects Mücella Yapıcı, said at the end: “Despite all the conspiracy theories and the prosecutor’s threat of severe prison sentences, we repeat: the Gezi protests stand for the undying hope for equality, the rule of law and democracy for this country.”
The public prosecutor’s office had called for “complicated life imprisonment” for Kavala and Yapıcı. The other 15 defendants should be incarcerated for between 15 and 20 years or for life, according to the prosecutors’ wish. The defense had also pleaded in the closing word for acquittal for all. She had argued that no evidence could be found against Kavala. The lawyers for all the other defendants found no fault in trying to bring about government change through peaceful means or in defending a city park.
The trial had dragged on with gruelingly long pauses for three years. The nationwide protests in 2013, supported by civil society and initially aimed at clearing the small Gezi Park in downtown Istanbul, were ultimately also directed against President Erdoğan’s authoritarian rule and the dismantling of the rule of law. They were crushed after weeks of demonstrations. There were deaths.
The attempted military coup in July 2016, about which Erdoğan most likely knew in advance, was thwarted by Erdoğan’s supporters and other sections of the population. There had been 249 fatalities.
There followed a wave of arrests and suspensions against alleged putschists in the military and police as well as in the educational sector, which continues to this day. The government blames followers of the Islamic preacher Fethullah Gülen, who lives in the USA, for the attempted coup. Other members of the opposition are also suspected, sometimes based on absurd assumptions.
Kavala is the only one of the 17 accused who has been detained without trial since October 2017. Erdoğan had publicly described Kavala as a “terrorist”. The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) had already called for Kavala’s release at the end of 2019 and classified the detention as politically motivated. Because Turkey did not follow the ECtHR, the Council of Europe initiated an exclusion procedure against Ankara.