Gezi trial emblematic of Turkey’s crackdown on civil society – POMED

The Gezi trial, where 16 civil society activists and human rights defenders face possible life sentences for attempting to overthrow the government, has been a “tragic case study of the breakdown of the rule of law in Turkey,” Turkey Program Coordinator Merve Tahiroğlu wrote for the think tank Project on Middle East Democracy (POMED).

The trial is also emblematic of the country’s ongoing crackdown on civil society and the human rights community, Tahiroğlu said, calling the charges absurd and baseless.

A Turkish court on Tuesday ruled for the continuation of Osman Kavala’s arrest, defying the European Court of Human Rights’ (ECHR) ruling for the Turkish philanthropist’s immediate release.

Observers have described the decision “as another marker of the lack of judicial independence in Turkey,” Tahiroğlu said.

Kavala was arrested in November 2017, and is accused of being the chief conspirator behind the 2013 Gezi Protests in Istanbul, which began as an urban-environmental demonstration against a project to tear down one of the last green spaces in central Istanbul and replace it with an Ottoman-style barracks, but quickly turned into the biggest anti-government protests in Turkey’s history.

The remaining 15 suspects in the case face trial without arrest.

On the same day as the “Kafkaesque trial,” as Tahiroğlu called the case, the U.N. Human Rights Council (UNHRC) held the third universal periodic review (UPR) for Turkey in Geneva.

Human rights and the rule of law have severely deteriorated in Turkey with several repressive measures taken following the failed coup attempt in July 2016, Human Rights Watch (HRW) said in a statement as it called on the UNHRC to “acknowledge and address the country’s human rights crisis.”

During the UPR sessions, countries including Egypt, France, Germany, the United Kingdom, Canada and the United States called on Turkey for reforms on key points, namely judicial independence, an extensive legal reform, a revision of Turkey’s anti-terror laws, respect for ECHR rulings, a return to freedom of expression and press freedom, the re-establishment of the right to peaceful assembly, an end to arbitrary detention and arrests, and the return to duty of democratically elected mayors who were removed from their posts in Kurdish-majority cities, Ahval Editor-in-Chief Yavuz Baydar relayed.

Turkey’s election as the vice chair and rapporteur for the U.N. Economic and Social Council’s Committee on Non-Governmental Organisations “is troubling for the message it sends,” Tahiroğlu said, “given Turkey’s poor record on civil society freedom.”

The country will have more influence over NGO accreditation at the U.N., Tahiroğlu said, although the role is mostly symbolic.

The Committee on NGOs has 19 members and “vets applications submitted by NGOs, recommending general, special or roster status on the basis of such criteria as the applicant’s mandate, governance and financial regime,” according to the U.N.