(London, August 25, 2026) – The Grand Chamber of the European Court of Human Rights today delivered a landmark judgment in the case of Osman Kavala, the human rights defender and civil society leader unlawfully imprisoned in Türkiye since November 2017. The court ruled that Kavala's continued detention is unlawful and found that his rights to fair trial, freedom of expression, and association have been violated. The court also found that his aggravated life sentence amounts to inhuman and degrading treatment and that the Turkish authorities acted in bad faith by keeping him in detention unlawfully. The court concluded that he was convicted for the ulterior purpose of punishing and silencing him, and to prevent his human rights work. The court ordered his release at the earliest possible date and that his conviction be quashed.
Human rights organizations Human Rights Watch, International Commission of Jurists, and the Turkey Litigation Support Project submitted a joint intervention to the court on the core rights issues at stake in the case. Amnesty International declared Osman Kavala and his six codefendants prisoners of conscience in June 2022.
“Today, in its latest ruling, the European Court of Human Rights has comprehensively established that Osman Kavala has been languishing in prison for almost nine years on the basis of a politically motivated trial,” said Eve Geddie, director of Amnesty International’s European Institutions Office. “Türkiye has defied two previous binding rulings from the court in his case. This obstruction of justice must end. Türkiye’s authorities, including judicial and prosecutorial, must act to free Osman Kavala immediately and unconditionally.”
In what became known as the “Gezi Park trial,” Kavala was sentenced on April 25, 2022, to life in prison without parole for “attempting to overthrow the government” alongside codefendants who received 18-year terms for “aiding the attempt to overthrow the government” during protests in 2013. The Turkish authorities should immediately release Osman Kavala and set aside his conviction in line with both Türkiye’s international legal obligations and the Turkish Constitution, the groups said.
In its latest judgment, the European Court examined the entirety of the Gezi proceedings, in which the prosecution falsely alleged that the 2013 peaceful protests in Istanbul’s Gezi Park were an attempt to overthrow the government. The court assessed the indictment, the charges, the purported evidence, the trial, the appeals, and the conviction against the European Convention on Human Rights’ fair trial guarantees. It found that the entire basis of Kavala’s deprivation of liberty and eventual conviction was “a flagrant denial of justice.” The court also recognized the structural shortcomings which undermine the independence and impartiality of the judiciary in Türkiye and ordered measures be taken to remedy them.
“Europe's highest human rights court has confirmed beyond doubt that Kavala’s arrest, detention, prosecution, and conviction as part of the Gezi trial was politically motivated and completely flawed from start to finish,” said Ayşe Bingöl Demir, director at the Turkey Litigation Support Project. “The systemic failures that made possible the violations of his rights since his arrest in October 2017 have been exposed once again.”
This is the third time the European Court has ruled on Kavala's situation. In December 2019, the court found that his detention violated his right to liberty and that it pursued the ulterior purpose of silencing him as a human rights defender. The court ordered his immediate release. In July 2022, in its second ruling on the case, the court found Türkiye in breach of its obligation to abide by the 2019 judgment.
The European Convention system for human rights protection now faces a defining test, the groups said. Despite these rulings, the Council of Europe has yet to take meaningful action to ensure Türkiye's compliance with the court’s judgments in the Kavala case.
“Türkiye was among the first states to join the Council of Europe and become a party to the European Convention on Human Rights, thereby agreeing to uphold and protect the rights it enshrines and implement the binding judgments of its court,” said Temur Shakirov, director of the Europe and Central Asia program at International Commission of Jurists. “It must now honor those obligations, and the Council of Europe needs to act to ensure it does.”
The Committee of Ministers (the Council of Europe's decision-making body) is charged with supervising execution and compliance with the court’s judgments. In the face of such serious and continuous lack of compliance, the Council of Europe, its Parliamentary Assembly, and secretary general also need to take every necessary measure and use all the appropriate tools available to secure the implementation of these judgments to ensure that Osman Kavala is finally released from prison. The Council of Europe and its member states should recognize the implications of Türkiye's failure to implement these judgments, which represents a serious threat to the effectiveness and credibility of the convention system.
Council of Europe member states must also keep the Kavala case at the top of their agenda concerning Türkiye and raise compliance with these judgments in clear and unambiguous terms with the Turkish authorities, including by articulating concrete demands for Osman Kavala’s immediate release.
“Osman Kavala has been unlawfully imprisoned for nearly nine years,” said Aisling Reidy, senior legal adviser at Human Rights Watch. “The European Court has now demanded his immediate release three times. It is vital that the Council of Europe and its member states act to ensure that the court’s judgments are respected and that Osman Kavala—finally—is freed.”
