AKP MP, Turkey’s CoE representative slams minister for his comments on Gezi case’s possible retrial

Duvar English

The ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) deputy and Turkey’s Council of Europe (CoE) representative Tuğrul Türkeş on July 26 slammed Justice Minister Yılmaz Tunç for delaying his meeting with Gezi prisoner Osman Kavala and for expressing his personal opinion on the possible retrial of the case.

In an interview with Duvar last week, Türkeş said he was willing to meet with Kavala in prison.

Then he applied to the Justice Ministry for the approval for and arrangement of the meeting with Kavala, as well as with other Gezi prisoners Mine Özerden, Çiğdem Mater, Can Atalay, and Tayfun Kahraman on July 19.

On July 24, Tunç said “We are in the evaluation phase, we will make the necessary decision,” for Türkeş’s application. 

Türkeş issued a long statement on X, formerly known as Twitter, on July 26, criticizing Tunç.

“For the request for the retrial (of the Gezi case), Tunç stated that they did not find the justification appropriate, which is the crime of ‘attempting to overthrow the government’ was committed under the parliamentary system and that the victim of the crime had changed since the transition to the Presidential Government System. He said ‘Decisions that have passed the appellate review cannot be reversed in favor of the law. It was evaluated as an inappropriate application in terms of both procedure and substance’,” Türkeş started.

“While applications are made to the Ministry to visit dozens of detainees every day and these are concluded within the day, the statements of our Justice Minister regarding the content of the case in response to our above-mentioned request were not stylish and appropriate. The Justice Minister should not prevent the pursuit of rights. Anyway, I did not say, ‘Let me visit these arrested defendants and take them out of the prison’. Likewise, we did not ask about the procedures and principles of their trial and/or the judicial process and/or whether they can be tried without detention. Our request is only to visit five of the arrested defendants in the Gezi Park trial at the discretion of the Ministry and within legal limits,” he said.

Türkeş then commented on the retrial of the case. “In the petition, there is no justification that ‘the victim of the crime has changed’ as stated by the Justice Minister, but on the contrary, ‘the victim of the crime has been abolished, abrogated and eliminated by the constitutional reform’. Therefore, ‘the victim has not changed’; ‘the victim has disappeared.’ These are two different concepts.”

“While our Justice Minister should have impartially managed this publicized development and application, on the contrary, he made statements and evaluations in an attempt to sweep it under the rug. In my opinion, this is not the right approach,” he concluded.

The annulment in favor of the law procedure involves the Ministry of Justice applying to the Chief Public Prosecutor's Office of the Court of Cassation to overturn decisions and judgments found to be legally flawed.

Philanthropist and businessperson Osman Kavala was arrested in 2017, and sentenced to aggravated life in prison without parole in April 2022, on charges of attempting to overthrow the government during the 2013 Gezi Park protests.

Kavala recently applied to be retried, and the files were sent to the Justice Ministry, requesting “annulment in favor of the law.”

Justice Minister Yılmaz Tunç has previously stated that Kavala’s life imprisonment verdict was fitting and that the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) acted with “political concerns” in its judgments demanding his immediate release.

The Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe initiated infringement proceedings against Turkey for not abiding by the ECHR ruling regarding Kavala.

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