An Istanbul court has acquitted prominent philanthropist Osman Kavala and eight defendants in the 2013 Gezi Park case, but in a counter move, Istanbul’s chief prosecutor has ordered Kavala’s continued detention stemming from a separate case pertaining to his supposed involvement in the failed 2016 coup attempt.
A verdict is expected tomorrow (February 19, 2020) in the cases of 11 human rights defenders, including the former leadership and several members of Amnesty Turkey, who have spent more than two-and-a-half years fighting trumped-up charges and could face up to 15 years behind bars if found guilty.
BİANET
The court has announced its ruling in the main trial of Özgür Gündem newspaper: Aslı Erdoğan, Necmiye Alpay and Bilge Aykut have been acquitted, the files of İnan Kızılkaya, Eren Keskin, Kemal Sancılı and Zana (Bilir) Kaya have been separated.
Activists have called on Davutoğlu and Babacan, who set up their own political movements after resigning from the ruling AKP, to withdraw as plaintiffs in the Gezi Park case. Davutoğlu was the foreign minister at the time of the 2013 Gezi Park protests, whereas Babacan was the deputy minister in charge of economy.
Yiğit Aksakoğlu was one of the 13 academics, rights advocates and non-governmental workers who were detained in their homes in a police operation on November 16, 2018. Aksakoğlu spent 221 days in pre-trial solitary confinement.
The Observatory for the Protection of Human Rights Defenders, a partnership of FIDH (International Federation For Human Rights) and the World Organisation Against Torture (OMCT), requests intervention in the following situation in Turkey.
Holding a press statement about the sixth hearing of Gezi trial to be held on February 18, Taksim Solidarity platform has said, “We have to defend Gezi to the end for our losses whose names are not even mentioned in this trial.”
An Istanbul prosecutor has presented his final sentencing opinion regarding the Gezi Park case. He demanded aggravated life imprisonment for three defendants in the case: renowned philanthropist Osman Kavala, the only jailed defendant in the case, civil society activist Yiğit Aksakoğlu and architect Mücella Yapıcı.
In their open letter published on the Financial Times today (January 30), a group of prominent politicians and academics from Europe have indicated that the continued detention of businessperson and rights defender Osman Kavala despite the verdict of European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) "is in clear breach of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR):