{"id":153673,"date":"2026-08-27T07:07:42","date_gmt":"2026-08-27T07:07:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/153673\/"},"modified":"2026-08-27T07:07:42","modified_gmt":"2026-08-27T07:07:42","slug":"erdogan-adviser-signals-possible-break-with-european-rights-system-after-kavala-ruling","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/153673\/","title":{"rendered":"Erdo\u011fan adviser signals possible break with European rights system after Kavala ruling"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Mehmet U\u00e7um<\/p>\n

A senior adviser to Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdo\u011fan has suggested that Turkey could reconsider its participation in the European human rights system after Europe\u2019s top rights court on Tuesday\u00a0ordered<\/a>\u00a0the immediate release of jailed businessman and philanthropist Osman Kavala.<\/p>\n

The comments came after the European Court of Human Rights\u2019 (ECtHR) 17-judge Grand Chamber\u00a0ruled<\/a>\u00a0on Tuesday that Kavala\u2019s conviction resulted from a \u201cflagrant denial of justice,\u201d must be regarded as null and void under convention law and that he must be released at the earliest possible date.<\/p>\n

Presidential chief adviser Mehmet U\u00e7um accused the ECtHR of issuing a politically motivated ruling and said Turkey was being pushed to review its status as a party to the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) as well as the right of individual petition to the Strasbourg court.<\/p>\n

\u201cAs the ECtHR continues to issue decisions that serve political projects, it loses all value for Turkey,\u201d U\u00e7um\u00a0said<\/a>\u00a0on X.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt is clear that Turkey is being forced to reconsider its status as a party to the ECHR and the possibility of individual applications to the ECtHR,\u201d he said. \u201cIf decisions based on political calculations against Turkey continue, all parties concerned should know that this will become inevitable.\u201d<\/p>\n

U\u00e7um added that such a development could ultimately cause \u201cthe collapse of the ECtHR system.\u201d<\/p>\n

Although U\u00e7um advises Erdo\u011fan on legal policy, his remarks do not constitute an official announcement that Turkey intends to withdraw from the ECHR.<\/p>\n

Turkey\u2019s Justice Ministry also denounced the judgment, describing it as the latest example of what it called the court\u2019s biased approach toward Turkey, according to ministry sources quoted by Deutsche Welle Turkish edition.<\/p>\n

The sources accused the ECtHR of disregarding its own established case law in its handling and resolution of Kavala\u2019s application.<\/p>\n

They defended Kavala\u2019s prosecution and conviction, saying he had been found guilty by independent and impartial Turkish courts of organizing, directing and financing the 2013 anti-government Gezi Park protests, which the government refers to as an attempted coup.<\/p>\n

The ministry sources also accused the Strasbourg court of \u201cusurping\u201d Turkey\u2019s national judicial authority by saying Kavala\u2019s final conviction should be treated as null and void.<\/p>\n

They rejected what they described as the court\u2019s allegation of bad faith against Turkey\u2019s judicial and administrative bodies.<\/p>\n

U\u00e7um similarly claimed that the ECtHR was not a superior appellate court and that its review of national proceedings was not hierarchical.<\/p>\n

He claimed that Turkish courts were free to decide whether to comply with ECtHR judgments and that Article 46 of the convention should not be interpreted as making the substance of those judgments conclusively binding.<\/p>\n

However, Article 46 explicitly requires states that are parties to the convention to abide by final ECtHR judgments in cases to which they are a party. Their implementation is supervised by the Council of Europe\u2019s Committee of Ministers.<\/p>\n

U\u00e7um also lashed out at Nacho S\u00e1nchez Amor, the European Parliament\u2019s rapporteur on Turkey, who described the judgment as the clearest and harshest answer he had heard from Strasbourg to claims that Turkey\u2019s judiciary was independent.<\/p>\n

Following the ruling on Tuesday, S\u00e1nchez Amor called it a \u201ccrushing blow\u201d to the credibility of Turkey\u2019s judiciary. Writing from \u0130stanbul\u2019s Marmara Prison in Silivri, where he was following another trial, S\u00e1nchez Amor demanded that Kavala be freed and reunited with his wife, Ay\u015fe Bu\u011fra.<\/p>\n

\u201cPrecisely from infamous Silivri prison, where #OsmanKavala has been unlawfully kept for almost 9 years now, I read the latest @ECHR_CEDH ruling on his case,\u201d S\u00e1nchez Amor\u00a0wrote on X<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Referring to S\u00e1nchez Amor as the European Parliament\u2019s \u201cofficial responsible for hostility toward Turkey,\u201d U\u00e7um accused him and other\u00a0critics<\/a>\u00a0of \u201cinsolence.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cNo one has the right to disparage the justice minister of the Republic of Turkey,\u201d he said, adding that criticism of the independence of the Turkish judiciary was unacceptable.<\/p>\n

The Grand Chamber found violations of Kavala\u2019s rights to liberty, a fair trial, freedom of expression and freedom of assembly and association. It also ruled that his prosecution, continued detention and conviction were predominantly intended to punish and silence him over his role in the Gezi Park protests and his work as a human rights defender.<\/p>\n

Kavala, 68, has been imprisoned since October 2017. He was sentenced in April 2022 to aggravated life imprisonment without the possibility of parole for allegedly attempting to overthrow the government by financing the Gezi protests.<\/p>\n

The ECtHR first ordered his release in December 2019. After Turkey failed to implement that judgment, the Council of Europe initiated infringement proceedings, and the ECtHR ruled in July 2022 that Ankara had failed to fulfill its obligations under the convention.<\/p>\n

Tuesday\u2019s final judgment was adopted by 15 votes to two.<\/p>\n

This article is republished from\u00a0Turkish Minute<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Mehmet U\u00e7um A senior adviser to Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdo\u011fan has suggested that Turkey could reconsider its…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":153674,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[83],"tags":[11391,1179,53004,11968,312,21044,72447,8014,26719,11394,72448,431,131,132,155,67510],"class_list":["post-153673","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-stockholm","tag-european-convention-on-human-rights-echr","tag-european-court-of-human-rights-ecthr","tag-freedom-of-assembly","tag-freedom-of-expression","tag-human-rights","tag-judicial-independence","tag-mehmet-ucum","tag-nacho-sanchez-amor","tag-osman-kavala","tag-right-to-a-fair-trial","tag-right-to-liberty","tag-rule-of-law","tag-stockholm","tag-sweden","tag-turkey","tag-turkish-judiciary"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@dk\/117166214157959465","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/153673","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=153673"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/153673\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/153674"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=153673"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=153673"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=153673"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}