The life imprisonment of Osman Kavala, an arts philanthropist who was detained in 2017 for his alleged involvement in the 2013 anti-government Gezi Park protests, has been upheld by a top Turkish appeals court. Kavala was sentenced to life without parole last spring. The international community has condemned his detention as a violation of human rights.
On September 28, a court in Turkey overturned three of the convictions of individuals involved in last year’s Gezi Park trials, while upholding the remaining four. Seven people had been previously sentenced to 18 years in prison. As a result of the ruling, Yiğit Ekmekçi, Mücella Yapıcı, and Hakan Altınay are set to be released, while Can Atalay, Tayfun Kahraman, Çiğdem Mater, and Mine Özerden are ordered to serve prison sentences.
In 2017, Kavala was detained at an Istanbul airport on suspicion of being involved in the protests that took place four years earlier. Although he was acquitted of the charges in 2020, he was immediately accused of participating in a 2016 military coup and was forced to remain in detention. In April 2022, he was sentenced to life imprisonment after his acquittal was overturned, on the basis of alleged financial sponsorship of the 2013 protests. Human rights organizations, such as Amnesty International, criticized the charges as being “baseless” and “an attempt to silence independent voices.”
Kavala ran the arts nonprofit Anadolu Kültür, which focused largely on preserving the cultural memory of marginalized groups in Turkey, including Armenian and Kurdish communities.
