A Turkish Court has on Monday, April 25, 2022, sentenced Paris-born philanthropist and Rights Defender, Osman Kavala, to life in jail for coup plot charges, which already landed him locked up without a conviction for more than four years.
The three-man panel of judges also sentenced seven other less prominent defendants to 18 years in jail each on charges of aiding the attempt to topple the government. The judgement is almost certain to attract a chorus of condemnation from Turkey’s main allies in the NATO Defence Alliance.
The Court’s ruling drew boos from a packed audience that included Western Diplomats who continue to stress the importance of rights issues and judicial independence in their relations with Turkey’s capital, Ankara.
Kavala told the court by video link from his high-security prison near Istanbul that he viewed the entire process as a “judicial assassination”. He told the court moments before Monday’s (April 25, 2022) ruling that “These are conspiracy theories drafted on political and ideological grounds”.
The three judges took less than an hour to issue their sentence in one of Turkey’s most high-profile trials in years. The hearing has been bothering Turkey’s strategic but tempestuous ties with its main Western allies since Kavala’s unexpected arrest in October 2017.
The 64-year-old Osman Kavala was then, best known as a soft-spoken businessman who was using a part of his wealth to promote culture and projects aimed at reconciling Turkey and Armenia. But Turkey’s President, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, portrayed him as a leftist agent of the Hungarian-born US billionaire, George Soros, who was accused of trying to use foreign money to topple Turkey’s state. As a result, Erdogan, in 2020, declared that “We can never be together with people like Kavala”.
Alternating Charges
Tens of thousands of people ended up being jailed or stripped of their government jobs in the eliminations that followed the coup attempt. But the seemingly arbitrary nature of the alternating charges filed against Kavala made him a symbol for international rights groups, as well as Western governments of Erdogan’s increasing authoritarian streak in the second decade of his rule.
Kavala was first charged with funding a wave of 2013 protests that some analysts viewed as the genesis of Erdogan’s more authoritarian streak in the latter half of his 20-year rule. A court acquitted and released him in February 2020, only for the police to arrest him, even before he could return home to his wife. Another court then accused him of being involved in the failed but bloody 2016 coup attempt that unleashed a year’s-long crackdown, causing tens of thousands to be either jailed or stripped of their government jobs. Kavala ultimately ended up being charged with both counts.
His treatment prompted the Council of Europe to launch rare disciplinary proceedings that could ultimately see Turkey’s membership suspended on the continent’s main human rights grouping. On Friday, April 22, 2022, Kavala made his closing statement before Monday’s (April 25, 2022) sentence.
“The fact that I have spent four-and-a-half years of my life in prison is a loss that cannot be compensated. The only thing that would console me is the possibility that what I have gone through helps put an end to grave judicial mistakes.”
Osman Kavala
