Osman Kavala • The Endless Gezi Trial in a few words

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The inquest into the so-called “Gezi Park” case accel­er­at­ed at the time of the arrest of busi­ness­man and phil­an­thropist Osman Kavala, on Octo­ber 18 2017. Dur­ing the first year of his impris­on­ment, in Novem­ber 2018, the sec­ond wave of arrests occurred.

Most of the peo­ple held in cus­tody were then lib­er­at­ed except for Yiğit Aksakoğlu, staff mem­ber of a civil­ian asso­ci­a­tion and Osman Kavala.

In Feb­ru­ary 2019, when the inquest was con­sid­ered com­plete and the accu­sa­tion was announced, Osman Kavala had already been jailed for approx­i­mate­ly 500 days… Fol­low­ing the pro­duc­tion of the accu­sa­tion, the num­ber of “sus­pects” amount­ed to 16.

The first hear­ing was held on June 24th and 25th 2019 in Silivri. Osman Kavala had been in jail for 20 months. Yiğit Aksakoğlu was freed. The judge pre­sid­ing the group of judges sug­gest­ed Kavala been assigned to house arrest. The major­i­ty of the judges refused.

To this day, there have been 6 hear­ings. On Tues­day Feb­ru­ary 18 2020, a 7th hear­ing will take place in the tri­bunal hall of the Silivri campus.

Who are the accused?

Osman Kavala, Mücel­la Yapıcı, Tay­fun Kahra­man, Can Ata­lay, Yiğit Aksakoğlu, Çiğ­dem Mater Utku, Mine Özer­den, Ali Hakan Altı­nay, Ayşe Pınar Alab­o­ra, Memet Ali Alab­o­ra, Can Dün­dar, Gökçe Yıl­maz, Han­dan Meltem Arıkan, Han­zade Hik­met Ger­miyanoğlu, İnanç Emekçi and Yiğit Ali Ekmekçi.

What are the accusations?

“Attempt­ed over­throw of the gov­ern­ment of the Repub­lic of Turkey”, “dam­age to pub­lic prop­er­ty”, “pos­ses­sion or cir­cu­la­tion of haz­ardous mate­ri­als”, “dete­ri­o­ra­tion of ceme­ter­ies”, “vio­la­tion of the law on firearms”, “loot­ing”, “injuries to oth­ers”, “vio­la­tion of the Law on the pro­tec­tion of cul­tur­al enti­ties and nat­ur­al spaces”.

When you know the rea­sons that set off the Gezi move­ment, these accu­sa­tions look like a joke…
For greater detail read: Istan­bul 2013 • Gezi.

On what basis?

The indict­ment is based on the report pre­pared in 2013 by the Direc­torate fight­ing con­tra­band and orga­nized crimes (KOM), at a time when the Gezi move­ment was still ongoing.

In sum­ma­ry, the report advis­es that Açık Toplum Vak­fı (which one can trans­late as the Foun­da­tion for an Open Soci­ety, with no rela­tion­ship with Soros) of which Osman Kavala is a mem­ber “would appear to be close to the Open Soci­ety Foun­da­tions linked to George Soros” and pur­ports to show that this insti­tute launched rebel­lions in a num­ber of coun­tries. It adds that Mehmet Ali Alab­o­ra, a come­di­an and actor, was in Egypt at the same time as Ivan Marovic, an activist in civ­il dis­obe­di­ence. Thus the report claims that Alab­o­ra, by stag­ing the play Mi Minor wished to incite the peo­ple to rebel. The pros­e­cu­tor built the accu­sa­tion on this report and accus­es Osman Kavala of financ­ing the protests and actions which took place in 80 towns, involv­ing mil­lions of people!

With was evidence?

For Osman Kavala, now incar­cer­at­ed for 840 days: there is no evi­dence of the pre­sumed financ­ing of the protests. But it is spec­i­fied that he sent cakes, sand­wich­es, tables and plas­tic chairs to Gezi Park. Which Kavala read­i­ly admits. The oth­er “evi­dence” con­sists of phone con­ver­sa­tions, mes­sages and his trips abroad…

For those on pro­ba­tion: evi­dence was searched for on Twit­ter, in press releas­es, lawyers’ ser­vices, par­tic­i­pa­tion in non-vio­lent meet­ings. Peace­ful protests were con­sid­ered to con­sti­tute crim­i­nal actions, for exam­ple “the man who plays the piano”, or “the stand­ing man” or yet again “the Earth tables” which con­sist­ed of col­lec­tive street meals dur­ing Ramadan…

Why is Osman Kavala still in jail?

Kavala pre­sent­ed an indi­vid­ual request to the Con­sti­tu­tion­al Tri­bunal but his request was turned down. He then turned toward the Euro­pean Court of Human Rights (ECHR). On Decem­ber 10 2019, the lat­ter ruled that Kavala’s incar­cer­a­tion vio­lat­ed his rights and demand­ed his imme­di­ate release. But he was not released. At the hear­ing on Decem­ber 25 2019, his lawyers once again request­ed his lib­er­a­tion but the judge refused con­sid­er­ing that “the ECHR deci­sion was not yet def­i­nite”.

As a reminder, the sen­tence request­ed against Osman Kavala, Mücel­la Yapıcı and Yiğit Aksakoğlu is that of “aggra­vat­ed per­pe­tu­ity”, mean­ing a real term of life­time impris­on­ment, as a sub­sti­tute for the death sen­tence abol­ished in Turkey in 2002. And the oth­er 6 defen­dants face up to 20 years in prison.

A change of judges?

Also note­wor­thy: a change of judges in mid-tri­al. The ear­li­er judges who were favor­able to house arrest were removed from the tri­al while those who favored Kavala’s ongo­ing incar­cer­a­tion were favored.

A Fetullah Gülen Effect?

The Gezi inquest was launched by Pros­e­cu­tor Muam­mer Akkas, cur­rent­ly sought for because of his belong­ing to preach­er Gülen’s Broth­er­hood. The deci­sions con­cern­ing the wire­tap­pings and phys­i­cal raids were tak­en by judges who were then fired and arrest­ed fol­low­ing the attempt­ed coup. These issues were raised by the lawyers. The pros­e­cu­tor con­sid­ered that “all the evi­dence and tran­scrip­tions of the wire­tap­pings were recon­sid­ered and any influ­ence by the orga­ni­za­tion (mean­ing the “Broth­er­hood”) was deleted.”

The case con­tains no oth­er evi­dence beside the tran­scripts. As men­tioned above, the entire indict­ment rests on the KOM report. It was pre­pared by the direc­tor of KOM, then direc­tor of secu­ri­ty, Mehmet Yeşilka­ya who, fol­low­ing the attempt coup was also arrest­ed. His suc­ces­sor, Naz­mi Ardıç who com­plet­ed the report, was also arrest­ed later.

What will happen on February 18?

This will be the 7th hear­ing in the tri­al. The accused will present their defense. It is expect­ed that the tri­bunal will hand down its verdict.

It is now obvi­ous that the sec­ond wave of judges assigned to this file have accel­er­at­ed the process. Accord­ing to the lawyers, the rea­son for this is an attempt to con­firm Kavala’s sta­tus as that of “con­demned”, thus ren­der­ing inaplic­ca­ble the deci­sion con­cern­ing the vio­la­tion of his rights, ren­dered by the ECHR con­cern­ing his deten­tion. If this is what hap­pens, Osman Kavala would be forced to begin his indi­vid­ual pro­ce­dures anew, first before the Con­sti­tu­tion­al Tri­bunal, then again before the ECHR .

What ideological objectives?

All the ele­ments of Turkey’s nation­al­ist stench are gath­ered here. The pop­u­lar upris­ing in Gezi that spread to the entire coun­try desta­bi­lized the regime, and raised hopes for a time, hopes that were rapid­ly and harsh­ly repressed. Judg­ing this polit­i­cal moment from the angle of a for­eign plot and des­ig­nat­ing as the guilty par­ty a defendor of Armen­ian cul­tur­al her­itage ( among oth­ers), and a pro­mot­er of cul­tur­al diver­si­ty, is a way of point­ing toward an exter­nal and an inte­ri­or ene­my of Turkey, “an indi­vis­i­ble nation/republic”. The great clas­sics of nation­al­ism are all gath­ered. They con­sist of the canons of the pow­er’s defense, direct­ly stream­ing from the ide­o­log­i­cal argu­ment jus­ti­fy­ing the mas­sacre of Arme­ni­ans in the begin­ning of the 20th cen­tu­ry and that must be called by its prop­er name, that of the “Armen­ian genocide”.

Thus, pass­ing judg­ment on “Gezi” and includ­ing it among “past and cur­rent for­eign plots against the Turk­ish Nation” becomes an obses­sion, the same as the cur­rent obses­sion­al eth­nic cleans­ing against the Kurds. The regime would thus rein­force its theme of Turk­ish­ness, adressed to the peo­ple it is delib­er­ate­ly attempt­ing to dumb down.

Update February 28 2020 -
11:15 Turkey

The court has just announced its ver­dict, acquit­ting all the defen­dants who were present at the tri­al of all charges and order­ing the release of Osman Kavala. Case files of defen­dants who are abroad will be separated.

20:00

The Istan­bul pros­e­cu­tor has just ordered the deten­tion of Osman Kavala, this time in con­nec­tion with the inves­ti­ga­tion about the failed coup of 2016 in Turkey. Acquit­ted on Feb­ru­ary 18, 2020 in the Gezi tri­al after more than 2 years in prison, Kavala is there­fore not released. The night­mare continues!

Illus­tra­tion: Draw­ing by Osman Başol dur­ing the hear­ing on June 23 2019

Translation by Renée Lucie Bourges

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