At the end of a three-day visit to Istanbul and Ankara, the co-rapporteurs for the monitoring of Turkey by the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe appealed to Turkey’s authorities to “find a solution to the Kavala case which is in line with an earlier ruling of the European Court of Human Rights”.
In a statement issued on 20 May, British Conservative John Howell and Latvian socialist Boriss Cilevics said they were “shocked” that philanthropist Osman Kavala was given an aggravated life sentence on 25 April 2022. They say this “blatantly defied” the court’s 2019 ruling, which calls for his immediate release.
An infringement procedure on the non-implementation of this ruling was launched by the Committee of Ministers in February 2022.
“We believe that resolving the Kavala case lies in the hands of the Turkish judicial system, which has the capacity to find a legal solution which complies with the Strasbourg ruling – in compliance with international law, and reached without political pressure or undue interference”, say the rapporteurs, who are also concerned about the heavy sentences handed down to Osman Kavala’s seven co-defendants in the Gezi trial.
The Director of the Council of Europe School of Political Studies in Istanbul is one of these co-defendants. (Original version in French by Véronique Leblanc)