Author: Christine Harutyunian

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June 2, 2020 3:54PM EDT



Council of Europe Ministers Should Urge Osman Kavala’s Release

(Strasbourg) – The Council of Europe Committee of Ministers should
issue a decision at its June 4, 2020 meeting directing Turkey to
release human rights defender Osman Kavala and drop all charges
against him, Human Rights Watch, the International Commission of
Jurists, and the Turkey Human Rights Litigation Support Project said
today.

The three groups have submitted a detailed submission to the Council
of Europe’s Committee of Ministers, which oversees enforcement of
European Court of Human Rights judgments. The groups outlined how
Turkey continues to violate Kavala’s rights by flouting a landmark
judgment, that became final on May 11 requiring his immediate release.

“The European Court ruled that Kavala’s detention is unlawful, and
their binding judgment requires Turkey to release him immediately,”
said Emma Sinclair-Webb, Turkey director at Human Rights Watch. “The
Committee of Ministers, at its June 4 meeting, should press Turkey to
comply and issue a clear message that no Council of Europe member
state should be silencing human rights defenders.”

The judgment is particularly significant because it is the first final
ruling against Turkey in which the court determined that in
interfering with an individual’s rights Turkey acted in bad faith and
out of political motivations, violating Art. 18 of the European
Convention on Human Rights. The court said that by detaining Kavala
since November 2017 and prosecuting him, the Turkish authorities had
“pursued an ulterior purpose, namely to silence him as human rights
defender.”

The European Court judgment in Kavala v. Turkey (Application no.
28749/18) found violations of Art. 5(1) (right to liberty and
security), Art. 5(4) (right to a speedy decision on the lawfulness of
detention), and the rarely used Art. 18 (limitation on use of
restrictions on rights), taken together with Art. 5(1). It required
Turkey to release Kavala and said that any continuation of his
detention would prolong the violations and breach the obligation to
abide by the judgment in accordance with Art. 46(1) of the European
Convention on Human Rights.

A court ordered Kavala’s detention on November 1, 2017 on bogus
allegations that he used the 2013 Istanbul Gezi Park protests as a
pretext for an attempted coup, and that he was involved in the July
15, 2016 attempted military coup. On February 18, 2020, Kavala and his
eight co-defendants were acquitted on charges of “attempting to
overthrow the government by force and violence” in the Gezi Park
trial.

But Kavala was not released, and a court detained him again
immediately on the charge of “attempting to overthrow the constitution
by force and violence” because of an ongoing 2016 coup-related
investigation against him. Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan had
publicly criticized his acquittal just before he was detained again.
Weeks later a court ordered his detention a second time on another
charge (“espionage”) but relying on the same evidence and
investigation file.

“The sequence of court orders prolonging his detention and the lack of
objective deliberation as to the lawfulness of any deprivation of
liberty indicates that decisions have been guided by political
considerations and there has been a concerted official effort to
prevent Kavala’s release,” said Róisín Pillay, director of the Europe
and Central Asia Programme of the International Commission of Jurists.
“Since the European Court’s judgment, Turkey has continued to violate
Kavala’s human rights.”

The targeted harassment in Turkey of rights defenders is part of a
wider trend of arbitrary detentions and abusive prosecutions of
journalists, elected politicians, lawyers, and other perceived
government critics.

This trend has been well documented in many reports by the Council of
Europe, the European Union, and human rights organizations.

“The campaign of persecution against Osman Kavala and the failure to
release him and drop all charges have perpetuated a chilling
environment for all human rights defenders in Turkey,” said Ayşe
Bingöl Demir, co-director of the Turkey Human Rights Litigation
Support Project.

The three organizations made detailed recommendations to the Committee
of Ministers, urging it to:

    Call on the government of Turkey to ensure the immediate release
of Osman Kavala as required by the European Court’s judgment,
stressing that the judgment clearly applies to his ongoing detention
and persecution;

    Place the Kavala v. Turkey judgment under “enhanced procedures”
and treat it as a leading case under Art. 18 of the European
Convention;

    Recognize that Kavala’s continuing detention violates Art. 46 of
the Convention, concerning the binding nature of final judgments of
the European Court, and that a failure to release Kavala may trigger
an Art. 46(4) procedure (infringement proceedings);

    Emphasize to the Government of Turkey that Kavala’s release is of
added urgency in the context of the Covid-19 pandemic, which increases
the risk to his health in detention; and

    Ask the Government of Turkey to drop all charges under which
Kavala has been investigated and detained to silence him, in
conformity with the Court’s findings that his rights have been
violated and that his exercise of rights to freedom of expression,
assembly, and association was wrongfully used as evidence to
incriminate him.

The groups also identified the general measures that Turkey needs to
take to carry out the judgment to end politically motivated detention
and prosecution of human rights defenders and other perceived
government critics. These measures focus on Turkey’s structural rule
of law problems. They include executive control over Turkey’s
judiciary and prosecutorial authorities, and the evidence of a clear
pattern of direct political interference in court decisions through
frequent public speeches by Turkey’s president and proxies. A pattern
of criminalizing the exercise of Convention-protected rights defines
many of the cases against human rights defenders and other perceived
government critics.