In a landmark Grand Chamber judgment, the European Court of Human Rights declared the Turkish philanthropist’s conviction null and void, finding that his prosecution was designed to punish and silence a leading figure of civil society
The European Court of Human Rights has ordered the immediate release of Turkish human rights defender and cultural philanthropist Osman Kavala, imprisoned for nearly nine years in one of the most emblematic cases of political repression in contemporary Türkiye.
In its landmark judgment of 25 August 2026 in Kavala v. Türkiye (no. 2), the Court’s Grand Chamber ruled that Kavala’s continued detention was unlawful and that his criminal conviction must be regarded as null and void under the European Convention on Human Rights. The Turkish authorities were instructed to secure his release at the earliest possible date and eliminate all the consequences of the measures imposed against him.
The ruling represents the most comprehensive international judicial condemnation of the proceedings against Kavala. According to Human Rights Watch, the Court found violations of his right to a fair trial, freedom of expression and freedom of association. It also concluded that his aggravated life sentence amounted to inhuman and degrading treatment.
Most significantly, the judges determined that the prosecution had pursued an ulterior political purpose: punishing Kavala, silencing him and preventing him from continuing his human rights and civil-society work.
Osman Kavala is a businessman, philanthropist and one of the most influential supporters of independent cultural initiatives in Türkiye. Through Anadolu Kültür, the nonprofit organisation he founded in 2002, he supported artistic exchange, historical dialogue and cultural cooperation between communities divided by political conflict and nationalism.
Anadolu Kültür has worked with artists, researchers and civil-society groups on projects concerning minority rights, relations between Türkiye and Armenia, Kurdish culture and the preservation of collective memory. These activities made Kavala an important figure in Turkish civil society but also placed him in opposition to the increasingly authoritarian political climate under President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.
Kavala was arrested in October 2017 and has remained imprisoned since November of that year. Turkish prosecutors accused him of organising and financing the 2013 Gezi Park demonstrations, a nationwide protest movement that began with opposition to the destruction of a public park in Istanbul and developed into a broader challenge to the government.
The prosecution portrayed the peaceful protests as an attempt to overthrow the government. Kavala was initially acquitted in February 2020, but the decision was overturned, and he was immediately detained again under a different accusation. In April 2022, an Istanbul court sentenced him to aggravated life imprisonment without the possibility of parole for allegedly attempting to overthrow the government.
The Strasbourg Court has now examined the indictment, the purported evidence, the trial, the appeals and the final conviction. It concluded that the proceedings constituted a flagrant denial of justice and identified structural problems affecting the independence and impartiality of the Turkish judiciary.
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This is the third major European Court ruling concerning Kavala. In December 2019, the Court found that his detention lacked a reasonable legal basis and was intended to silence him as a human rights defender. It ordered his immediate release.
When Türkiye refused to implement that judgment, the Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe initiated infringement proceedings. In July 2022, the Court ruled that Türkiye had failed to fulfil its obligation to comply with the original decision. Despite two binding judgments, Kavala remained in prison.
The 2026 Grand Chamber ruling rejects the Turkish government’s argument that the conviction and subsequent detention represented legal developments separate from the violations identified in 2019. The Court instead examined the Gezi Park proceedings as a continuous process, from the original arrest to the aggravated life sentence.
The judgment also highlights how criminal law can be transformed into an instrument for restricting civil society. When cultural cooperation, philanthropy, public protest and contacts with international organisations are reframed as evidence of conspiracy, the judicial system no longer investigates crimes: it constructs political enemies.
This mechanism is part of the wider repression of journalists, artists, lawyers and critics documented in Türkiye. ChannelDraw examined this system in Ten Years Later: When a Drawing Became “Terrorism”, which recounts how a Turkish court order classified a political drawing as terrorist propaganda and attempted to block ChannelDraw together with dozens of independent accounts and publications.
The Kavala judgment was welcomed by human rights organisations that had intervened in the proceedings. Human Rights Watch, the International Commission of Jurists and the Turkey Litigation Support Project jointly presented observations to the Court on the fundamental rights at stake.
Amnesty International has recognised Kavala and his co-defendants as prisoners of conscience since 2022, maintaining that they were prosecuted solely for exercising their rights and participating in legitimate civil-society activities.
The decision now places responsibility not only on Türkiye but also on the institutions of the Council of Europe. European Court judgments are legally binding, but their authority depends on member states implementing them and on the Council of Europe responding effectively when governments refuse.
Türkiye was among the first countries to join the Council of Europe and is a party to the European Convention on Human Rights. Its prolonged refusal to free Kavala has therefore become a test of the credibility of the entire European human rights system.
The Grand Chamber has left no ambiguity: Kavala’s imprisonment is unlawful, his trial was politically motivated and his conviction has no validity under Convention law.
The question is no longer whether Osman Kavala should be released. Europe’s highest human rights court has answered that repeatedly. The question is whether Türkiye will finally respect its international obligations—and whether European institutions are prepared to defend the authority of their own judgments.
Read the official decision and related documents on the European Court of Human Rights website.
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