Turkey must immediately release the imprisoned activist Osman Kavala, the European Court of Human Rights has urged. In a ruling handed down on Tuesday, the Strasbourg court stated that Turkey’s 2022 sentencing of Kavala to life imprisonment must be considered invalid.
The now 69-year-old activist and businessman was arrested in 2017 and later convicted over alleged involvement in the coup attempt against President Recep Tayyip Erdogan in the summer of 2016. The charge has long been contested by human rights organizations, which view the case as emblematic of a broader crackdown on dissent.
The court’s position is not new. As far back as 2019, the European Court of Human Rights concluded that Kavala’s imprisonment was politically motivated and amounted to a violation of the European Convention on Human Rights, a finding Turkey has declined to act upon in the years since.
Kavala’s standing extends well beyond the courtroom. He has many years of experience as a human rights activist in Turkey, and in 2023 he was awarded the Council of Europe’s Vaclav Havel Prize for Human Rights, an honor that underscored his status as a symbol of civil society under pressure.
The latest ruling sharpens a long-running standoff between Ankara and Europe’s top human rights body. By declaring the life sentence invalid and repeating its call for release, the court places renewed pressure on Turkey to comply, while leaving open the question of what consequences, if any, will follow continued defiance.
