Opinion | Turkey reaches a new low of despotism
Osman Kavala, who already has spent 4½ years behind bars on invented charges of subversion and now is facing life in prison without parole, put it best at his sentencing Monday. His trial “has become completely deformed under political influence,” he said, his long jailing “an act of deprivation of liberty by abuse of power.” The abuser is President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, and the sentence another grim marker of his deepening despotism.
Mr. Kavala, a philanthropist and civic activist, was arrested in October 2017 and accused of attempting to overthrow the government in connection with the Gezi Park protests of 2013 and the failed coup of July 2016. Mr. Erdogan has long espoused rather bizarre conspiracy theories about the opposition to his rule, often seeing the hidden hand of financier George Soros and exiled cleric Fethullah Gulen. In keeping with the dictator’s handbook, Mr. Erdogan has been unable to see that the opposition to him is legitimate and enduring. He has sunk further and further into heavy-handed strongman tactics, with wholesale jailing of civil society activists, judges and journalists, among others.
The harsh sentence for Mr. Kavala stands out because of Mr. Erdogan’s personal animosity toward him and the twisted weaponization of the courts. As The Post’s Kareem Fahim noted, Human Rights Watch concluded that Turkey was “using domestic court decisions to prolong Kavala’s detention and extend the life of baseless prosecutions. The courts have issued sham release orders, initiated multiple criminal proceedings against Kavala on the same facts, and separated and rejoined case files accusing him of bogus offenses.” Mr. Kavala, 64, founded Anadolu Kultur, an organization that promotes diversity, culture and human rights. In the Turkish indictments, he was accused of organizing and financing the 2013 protests against a government plan to destroy green space in the park, which blossomed into a nationwide protest movement against Mr. Erdogan’s authoritarianism. Mr. Kavala also was accused of colluding with Mr. Soros to incite the protests, which he and Mr. Soros have denied.
In plain view, Mr. Erdogan has used fables to throw Mr. Kavala in the gaol, and now threatens to keep him there forever. Mr. Kavala can appeal the ruling, but his odyssey through the courts so far does not augur well. Before the sentence was handed down, Mr. Kavala said by video link from prison that he was subject to “assassination by the use of the judiciary.” The court has been so obviously unjust that the Council of Europe has begun proceedings that could lead to Turkey’s suspension from the body after Turkey refused to heed a demand by the European Court of Human Rights to free Mr. Kavala.
Was Nelson Mandela crushed by prison? Vaclav Havel? Was Andrei Sakharov silenced by internal exile in Gorky? They all suffered but rose again to become voices of conscience. Mr. Kavala, too, cannot be silenced by prison bars. If Mr. Erdogan had any common sense, he would release Mr. Kavala and invite him over for a personal talk. Mr. Erdogan might learn something about real power — that of principles.
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