On Thursday 26 October, a spokesperson for the European External Action Service (EEAS) urged Turkey to take further positive measures to defend human rights, saying that the release on bail the day before of human rights campaigners (including the director for Turkey of Amnesty International, İdil Eser, arrested on the island of Büyükada in early July) was an "encouraging" sign (see EUROPE 11826).
"While the trial (of these activists) and the investigations and trials of many journalists, academics, human rights defenders and other civil society activists continue, further positive steps are needed to defend fundamental rights and freedoms in Turkey and solve serious problems in the rule of law, " the EEAS spokesperson said in a statement.
The spokesperson pointed out that the detention of the president of the cultural institution Anadolu Kültür, Osman Kavala, "trusted interlocutor and defender of good EU-Turkey relations", was "the last of the worrying cases that require a very rapid resolution on the basis of the principle of the presumption of innocence and the application of pre-trial detention in accordance with the European Convention on Human Rights ". (Original version in French by Camille-Cerise Gessant)