A delegation from PEN Norway is monitoring the upcoming hearing in the merged Gezi Park and Çarşı trial on Friday 26 November, which comprises 51 defendants, including the civil society actor and human rights defender Osman Kavala.
PEN Norway calls for the court to abide by the decisions of the European Court and Committee of Ministers and to free Mr Kavala from his four-year, unjust detention. PEN Norway’s indictment reports into the two cases raised against Mr Kavala, (Gezi Park Trial, Kavala & Barkey) reveal no concrete evidence in either case and further serious flaws in the compilation of the indictments against him and his fellow defendants.
PEN Norway calls for the judicial panel to uphold the domestic rule of law, and to comply with its obligations under the European Convention to apply the decisions made as far back at 10 December 2019, that ruled for Mr Kavala’s release from pre-trial detention.
Mr Kavala was first detained in October 2017 on charges of attempting to bring down the constitutional order by involvement in and financing of the Gezi Park protests in Turkey in 2013. He was kept in pre-trial detention for 16 months before the evidence against him was revealed in an indictment of almost 700 pages. In his report on the indictment for PEN Norway’s Turkey Indictment Project 2020, Kevin Dent QC found that:
‘Overall, there is a total lack of balance and fairness in the indictment. Again, there are two possibilities; either the authors of the indictment were so carried away with the grand political thesis that they were unable to objectively assess their own evidence and/or it was not an indictment drafted in good faith.’
Mr Kavala and the majority of his co-defendants were acquitted of all charges in February 2020. Despite this acquittal, Mr Kavala was arrested the same day and returned to detention on the basis of a charge of espionage. The indictment in relation to these new charges was studied in PEN Norway’s Turkey Indictment Project and was found to be void of evidence and not to conform to domestic procedural requirements.
Following an appeal the case is subjected to retrial. PEN Norway call for this prolonged summary punishment to end and for Mr Kavala’s rights to a fair trial and to liberty and security to be upheld. We call for the presumption of innocence of all defendants in Turkey to be respected and for the judicial harassment of all defendants in these cases, brought 8 years after the event, to end on Friday.
