Traditionally announced in Strasbourg at the opening of the plenary session of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, the Vaclav Havel Human Rights Prize was awarded on Monday 9 October to Turkish philanthropist and businessman Osman Kavala.
Arrested in 2017 and imprisoned ever since for “attempting to overthrow the government” by financing the anti-government protests in 2013 known as the Gezi movement, Osman Kavala is considered to be the bête noire of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.
By awarding him, the Council of Europe knows that it will incur the wrath of Turkey, which has been one of its member states since 1950.
After Osman Kavala’s arrest, the European Court of Human Rights called for his immediate release in 2019, arguing that the sole purpose of the human rights activist’s detention was to “reduce him to silence”.
Ignoring this decision, Ankara went ahead with the trial which, in 2022, resulted in a life sentence.
In view of the seriousness of this refusal, the Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe initiated an “infringement procedure” against Turkey. An exceptional mechanism that has only been launched once before, against Azerbaijan, this procedure provides for sanctions, the most serious of which would be the exclusion of Turkey. (Original version in French by Véronique Leblanc)