25 Mart tarihli "Kavala v. Türkiye" AİHM Büyük Daire duruşmasının tam metni
25 Mart 2026 tarihinde Strazburg'da, Avrupa İnsan Hakları Mahkemesi Büyük Dairesi'nde görülen "Kavala v. Türkiye" davasına ilişkin duruşmanın tam metni aşağıda sunulmaktadır. İçerik, duruşmanın akışını ve tarafların beyanlarını olduğu gibi yansıtmak amacıyla herhangi bir editoryal müdahaleye tabi tutulmamış; akışın daha iyi anlaşılması için ara başlıklarla desteklenmiştir. Aşağıda deşifresi paylaşılan duruşmanın kaydına erişmek için tıklayınız. Please be seated. I declare open the public hearing of the admissibility and merits of the case "Kavala v. Turkey". The application was lodged with the Court on 18 January 2024 under Article 34 of the Convention by a Turkish national, Mr Kavala. The application was allocated to the Second Section of the Court, pursuant to Rule 42 § 1 of the Rules of Court. The application was communicated to the Court on 21 March 2024. On 16 December 2025, the Chamber decided to relinquish jurisdiction in favour of the Grand Chamber. The Council of Europe Commissioner for Human Rights exercised his right to intervene in the proceedings by submitting written observations and taking part in the hearing in accordance with Article 36 § 3 of the Convention and Rule 44 § 2 of the Rules of Court. In the proceedings before the Chamber, several non-governmental organisations — Turkey Human Rights Litigation Support Project, Human Rights Watch, International Commission of Jurists, Kroni Foundation for Justice, Fair Trials Clinic of the University of Amsterdam, Rights Watch, the Union of Turkish Bar Associations, Redress and the Association for Freedom of Expression, as well as Professor Luttig — were granted leave to make written submissions in accordance with Rule 44 § 3 of the Rules of Court. This authorisation was maintained for the purposes of the proceedings before the Grand Chamber. On 3 February 2026, I also authorised the following seven organisations to intervene as third parties to the proceedings: European Criminal Bar Association, Media and Law Studies Association, Human Rights Joint Platform, European Association of Judges, Association of European Administrative Judges, Judges for Judges and European Magistrates for Democracy and Freedoms. The respondent Government is represented by their co-agent, Mr Aydın, Head of the Human Rights Department of the Ministry of Justice of the Republic of Turkey, assisted by members of his team and several advisers. The applicant is represented by Professor Leach and Professor Çalı, assisted by several advisers. The Commissioner for Human Rights is represented by Mr Michael O'Flaherty, Commissioner for Human Rights, assisted by members of his team. I welcome the representatives of the parties in the name of the Court. Having consulted the Agents of the Government, the representatives of the applicant and the Commissioner for Human Rights, I have determined the order of address as follows. Mr Aydın will speak first, followed by Professor Bozbayındır for the Government for around 32 minutes. Then, Professor Leach, followed by Professor Çalı for the applicant for the same time. And finally, Mr O'Flaherty, Commissioner for Human Rights. I call Mr Aydın. Mr President, esteemed judges of the Grand Chamber, it is a great honour for me to address you on behalf of the Government of the Republic of Turkey. Before I begin my speech, we reiterate the written observations we have submitted to the Chamber and the Grand Chamber. First of all, two separate individual applications regarding the complaints giving rise to the present case are currently pending before the Constitutional Court. For 13 years, the Court has recognised the individual application to the Constitutional Court as an effective domestic remedy. The applicant invites the Grand Chamber to depart from this well-established case law. Such a request demands convincing evidence. However, the applicant attempts to conclude that the Constitutional Court is ineffective by relying on different legal issues arising from different factual circumstances. The figures, however, are clear. Out of the 4,876 judgments finding a violation delivered by the Constitutional Court to date, 4,868 have been fully executed. Moreover, the first application with the Constitutional Court was lodged on 9 June 2022. The second application concerning the complaints made following the conviction was lodged on 24 October 2023. The application was lodged less than three months prior to the application lodged with the Court on 18 January 2024. Arguing that the Constitutional Court is an ineffective remedy in respect of all post-conviction complaints on the basis of such a short period of time rests on an extremely weak foundation. As consistently emphasised in the Convention and the Court's well-established case law, the Convention system is founded on the principle of subsidiarity. If the Court examines the present case while the proceedings before the Constitutional Court are still pending, this would undermine the principle of subsidiarity. Furthermore, the applicant also raised his complaints under Article 5 of the Convention in the execution process before the Committee of Ministers. Currently, the Committee of Ministers is supervising the execution of the Court's previous judgments. The Convention system does not envisage the same matter being examined simultaneously before both the executive body and the Court. Such parallel proceedings risk undermining the institutional balance of the Convention system and may lead to conflicting assessments. The Court's decision declaring the present application inadmissible would be the solution most consistent with the Convention system. Mr President, esteemed members of the Court, This case does not concern peaceful protests that are considered normal in a democratic society. On the contrary, it was an initiative planned well before the outbreak of violence, implemented step-by-step in accordance with a specific strategy and targeting the legitimate Government. The detailed assessments made by the national courts provide an important context for understanding the background of the Gezi insurrection. Since the early 2000s, certain insurrection movements targeting governments emerged in Turkey's neighbouring regions. They were shaped within specific methods carried out by networks and organised groups operating under the appearance of civil society. In those judgments, it was noted that the same methods were applied during the Arab Spring. And in some countries, these methods laid the groundwork for developments that led to civil wars. While in others, they resulted in bloody changes of power. The Gezi insurrection has been assessed by national courts as a manifestation of violent rebellion movements. It was described as aiming to prevent the functioning of the democratically elected Government and to overthrow it. Indeed, the Gezi insurrection was a process that had been prepared since 2011, organised through social media and implemented in a planned manner. Gezi Park served merely as a pretext to achieve this objective. The insurrection must be assessed within this context and this background. In 2013, the situation had turned into widespread violence. For four months, a violent uprising took place, particularly in the heart of Istanbul and across the country, threatening the lives, the physical integrity and the property of innocent people. In the course of the Gezi insurrection, 280 workplaces, 259 vehicles, 103 police vehicles, certain police stations and many public buildings were damaged. The Prime Minister's Office was targeted. Twelve political party premises and a significant amount of public infrastructure were destroyed. Eight civilians and two police officers lost their lives and more than 9,000 people were injured. The figures clearly show that the events in question went far beyond the limits of peaceful protest that are considered normal in a democratic society. Mr President, esteemed members of the Court, The detailed findings of national courts also demonstrate that the incidents constituted a process directed by certain individuals and organisations, particularly the Taksim Solidarity Platform. These structures directed crowds, manipulated them through social media, and facilitated the protests nationwide and the involvement of various terrorist organisations in the incidents. The role is clearly visible in a press statement issued by these structures in a period when the acts of violence intensely took place. In the statement made the day after the Prime Minister's Office was targeted, the following expressions were used: "We are united on the street, we will win on the street, we are united on the street, we saw our strength, we know we will win on the street." According to the findings of the national courts, the applicant occupied a central position in the Gezi insurrection. The applicant was regularly informed by the Taksim Solidarity officials about the course of the protests. His instructions were regularly sought as to how to respond to new developments. The applicant also played a key role in determining and shaping the narrative directed at the international public opinion regarding the Gezi insurrection. In light of the concrete evidence available in the case file, it would not reflect the true nature of the incidents to characterise the applicant's role as civil society activity. The applicant disregards the comprehensive findings of the national courts and reduces a complex and violent process to a narrow and incomplete framework. For this reason, the present application must be examined in light of the established factual and legal framework and in accordance with the principle of subsidiarity. In conclusion, we are of the opinion that if the Court examines the present application within the context assessed by national courts, it will arrive at a conclusion that is consistent with the reality of the incidents. I request that you give the floor to Professor Bozbayındır. - Thank you very much for your comments. Professor, you have the floor. Mr President, distinguished judges of the Court, Democracy is inherently fragile and for that reason it must be protected. States have not only the right but also the duty to safeguard democratic order against serious threats, especially threats to the life of a nation. Article 312 of the Turkish Penal Code reflects this legitimate objective, serving as one of the legal instruments through which the State protects democratic institutions and public order. Article 312 is a traditional state-protection offence requiring the existence of an attempt. It safeguards the very existence of the State and the institutional integrity of the executive as a constitutional organ embodying the will of the electorate. In this respect, holding especially the plotters of a violent insurrectionary movement accountable is essential to effectively safeguard citizens' lives, physical integrity and property from large-scale violence. Indeed, where State authorities are destroyed, citizens' parliamentary and electoral rights become illusory and the result is the destruction of democratic society. Functionally equivalent provisions exist across Europe, including the offence of rebellion under the Spanish Penal Code (Article 472), the German Hochverrat (Section 81) and the French provisions under Article 412 et seq., which criminalise insurrectionary movements and related offences. These offences are designed to act early, enabling the State to prevent threats to the constitutional order before they materialise. Relatedly, Article 312 of the Turkish Penal Code, like its European counterparts, is a collective offence. With that, I mean it should be treated differently from individual offences such as murder or robbery. This is a collective offence, committed through the convergence of multiple acts and the involvement and interaction of multiple actors, as in the present case. The offence is consummated at the stage of attempt. Article 312 of the Turkish Penal Code criminalises attempts to abolish the Government and, importantly, any attempt to prevent, in whole or in part, the Government from performing its duties. This is an endangerment offence. Article 312 of the Turkish Penal Code applies once coercive acts aimed at overthrowing the Government are set in motion. Completion of the objective is logically not required because in such offences, if you succeed in completing them, probably there will be no judge to try such an offence. The initiation of execution thus suffices. Thus, State resilience does not preclude criminal liability. In this regard, as Mr Aydın had emphasised, the Gezi protests constitute an insurrectionary movement. At the height of the June 2013 disturbances, Taksim Solidarity, a principal actor in this case, described the country as a "scene of fire" and presented the protests as a decisive force, asserting that the State's credibility was eroding and that this was only the beginning. These statements sought to legitimise violence and signalled to both the public and the authorities that attempts to undermine State authority had become sufficiently organised and were likely to continue. It is also of note that, as explained in detail in the Court of Cassation's judgment concerning the context and background to Gezi, certain preparatory activities had been carried out since 2011, long before the violent insurrectionary movements. Indeed, in such offences, what matters is a case-specific assessment, taking into account the political and social context at the time of the acts and the significance of the object targeted. Mr President, Honourable Judges of the Grand Chamber, We now want to come to one of the major bones of contention of this case, which is the proper test of legality. The applicant's approach contains a fundamental error regarding the scope of legality, as it completely disregards the general part of the Criminal Code. The applicant claims that, I quote, "There is no shred of evidence referred to by domestic courts which establishes that he resorted to the use of force or violence." End of quotation. This is a mischaracterisation of the factum probandum. The proposition underlying the applicant's approach can be summarised as: "If he did not commit any violent act, you must acquit." Nonetheless, the applicant was not convicted for committing violent acts personally, but as a co-perpetrator of the offence in conjunction with Article 37 of the Turkish Penal Code. The domestic courts convicted the applicant as a co-perpetrator alongside other co-accused for his involvement in the organisation, planning and leadership of the insurrectionary movement. Accordingly, his acts and role were assessed within the context of the collective act of insurgency involving violence and coercion. I quote directly from the Court of Cassation's judgment, page 63: "Indeed, classical doctrine on crimes against the State has long distinguished between those who execute and those who direct." Since the 1605 Gunpowder Plot, this has not changed. A co-perpetrator belonging to the leadership core is not required to have personally used violence. Accordingly, it is not necessary for co-perpetrators themselves to carry out acts of violence. At this moment, I want to refer to an important work in which Graham Hughes observed in his trailblazing study on this specific legal problem as follows: "In short, plots, rebellions, riots, espionage, sabotage are group phenomena and require the inspiration and direction of a few talented individuals who often work behind the scenes and do not participate in the execution of the plan. If the law were limited to apprehension and punishment of the people who actually engage in physical acts of violence, these leaders would escape punishment and would be free to plot again." These incisive observations fit like a glove with the circumstances of the present case. Indeed, the evidence before the domestic courts demonstrated that the applicant was a figure to whom others turned for guidance, who provided material and financial support and continued these activities after the violent acts had begun. We also submit that a person who provides infrastructure, financing and strategic direction to an insurrectionary movement and continues to do so after it has become violent cannot reasonably claim that his contribution bears no causal relationship to the violence and coercion on the ground. Crucially, the contribution of an individual co-perpetrator need not be causal for each individual act. What matters is that the co-perpetrator's contributions, taken as a whole, are causal to the commission of the offence. Against this background, the domestic courts identified, in detail, a causal chain of five elements establishing the applicant's functional contribution as a co-perpetrator. First, operational framework. The Court of Cassation found that the applicant provided the operational framework by coordinating meetings with co-accused persons at his own institution and business, including his restaurant. Second, financing and logistical support. The applicant financed protesters and provided protective equipment for the continuation of confrontation with security forces. Third, media and diplomatic coordination. The applicant coordinated with domestic and international media to portray the events as peaceful demonstrations and sought to procure an international embargo on crowd-control equipment. Fourth, continuing strategic direction. Intercepted communications showed that the applicant was continuously consulted by leading participants on strategic decisions throughout the events. Fifth, the nexus with cause and effect. The domestic courts found that terrorist organisations and mobs were instrumentalised during the events. In short, the applicant's role created the conditions in which sustained mass disruption, combined with violence, exerted coercive pressure on the Government's functional capacity. The Government submits that Article 312 and the relevant general provisions of the Turkish Penal Code fully satisfy the principle of nullum crimen sine lege as enshrined in Article 7 of the Convention. The applicant, however, seeks to transform the Court into an appellate court. The Government respectfully invites the Court to exercise particular caution in this regard. We emphasise that the Court cannot itself assess the facts which have led a national court to adopt one decision rather than another. Otherwise, it would be acting as a court of first instance and would disregard the limits imposed on its role. Questions of evidence relating to likelihood of conviction, reviewing the evidence to determine whether the domestic courts correctly established the elements of Article 312 of the Convention, would transform Article 7 from a guarantee of legality into a vehicle for re-evaluating evidence. Mr President, members of the Grand Chamber, At this juncture we wish to emphasise that the applicant's approach to evidence is also fundamentally misleading. The applicant isolates each act and portrays it as trivial, yet when considered collectively these acts form part of the offence. A fundamental principle of criminal evidence assessment, not only in Turkey, is that all essential facts must be considered together. No individual item of evidence should be assessed in isolation. Its true probative value emerges only in the context of all other circumstances. This is particularly important in cases such as this, involving complex collective conduct, where evidence spans networks, unfolds over time and reflects coordinated activity. The question is always what the totality of the conduct reveals when the acts are considered together. Indeed, the domestic courts in the present case did not convict the applicant, say, for distributing pastries. They convicted him because, when the evidence was assessed as a whole, as the Court of Cassation's methodology requires, a coherent operational direction emerged. The pastries were distributed at coordination points during the violent unrest. The meetings were planning sessions for escalation. The telephone calls were instructions to other co-perpetrators and intermediaries. The Government wishes to underline that nothing in these submissions is intended to undermine the importance of the protection afforded by the Convention. Nonetheless, this case is a good example of why international courts should not go into the details of a national criminal procedure. Indeed, an international court which does not have the case file and evidence at hand is too far removed to assess which measures might have been required at a certain stage of the proceedings. In particular, and I think this is very important for the purposes of the present case, the assumption that the applicant himself must have resorted to violence cannot serve as a basis for overturning a national finding. Importantly, assuming that earlier findings of this Court — I refer to the 2019 and perhaps also the 2022 judgments — preclude any further action by national authorities would, in effect, transfer the ius puniendi of the High Contracting Party to this Court, a result never intended by the drafters of the Convention. This underscores two points. First, the issue extended beyond the Gezi project itself. And second, the applicant was a decision maker who opposed any de-escalation of the insurrectionary movement by rejecting a clearly democratic solution. On the 24th of June 2013, as participation waned, the applicant and HHG noted the resistance may lose momentum and now they explored new ideas such as spreading it to Anatolia. Under the applicant's guidance, forum coordination structures were established, meetings organized and his venues actively used. The Court of Cassation found that briefings and decisions were systematically reported to the applicant. In sum, the Court of Cassation found that the applicant exercised decisive influence over both Taksim Platform and Taksim Solidarity. Returning to Article 18. Furthermore, the applicant's allegations under Article 18 and his broader request suffered from a hyper-inflation. At times, relying on a mischaracterization of both facts and law. For example, he contends that Article 18 should be applied in conjunction with Article 7, arguing that Article 7 is not an absolute right. This is incorrect. In 2024, this Court said explicitly Article 18 cannot be applied in conjunction with Article 7. The whole structure of the Convention rests on the general assumption that public authorities act in good faith. As a founding member of the Council of Europe, the Government fully endorses this principle. Yet the applicant's approach will reverse the burden of proof, exposing a State upholding its security to accusation of mala fide action. Clearly contrary to the Convention's letter and spirit, the burden of proof must therefore remain with the applicant, both de facto and de jure. Merabishvili broadened this high standard, but still maintained a high standard of proof. Maintaining a high standard of proof is good law. Where the standard of proof is any lower, the Court will be compelled to find violations in every high-profile case. The investigation and criminal proceedings against the applicant, a leading figure in the country's most extensive recent insurrection, were necessary and lawful. To accept the contrary, will hand a carte blanche to those claiming to defend human rights while seeking to overthrow the legitimate Government. And regarding other allegations, the applicant has failed to demonstrate any concrete link between the alleged violations of fair trial rights and the outcome of the trial. I hope the Government hopes that the Court should withstand the applicant's persistent invitation to blur the distinction between facts and law and to assume a role of a Court of First Instance, an outcome directly contrary to the principle of subsidiarity enshrined in the Convention. The Government therefore respectfully invites the Court to conclude that no violation of the Convention has occurred. Thank you. - I thank you and I now call Professor Leach. Mr President, Osman Kavala is a civil society activist and human rights defender. He's been long active in advocating for cultural rights of minorities and artistic freedoms and the values of democracy, peace and reconciliation. He is an innocent man who has been unlawfully and arbitrarily locked up in a Turkish prison for more than eight years. As a result of a flagrant abuse of the criminal justice system, which has been instrumentalised in order to silence him, his case is unprecedented. The Court has never before had a third case come before this Court following two previous judgments, one of which found violations of Articles 18 and 5 and ordered Mr Kavala's release and the second, an infringement proceedings judgment finding a breach of Article 46. After setting out the context of this case, I will address the question of domestic remedies before explaining why Articles 5 § 4 and 5 § 1 have been breached. Professor Çalı will then address the Court in relation to Articles 6 and 7, 10 and 11, 18 and 3. It has always been made crystal clear that this case concerns the ongoing and new violations of the Convention perpetrated since this Court's 2019 judgment. It is emphatically not, as the Government would have it, a case relating to the implementation of that judgment. However, in order to elucidate the ongoing and new violations, it is of course essential to reiterate what this Court has already found concerning the same criminal proceedings instigated against Mr Kavala in 2017, which led to his conviction and sentence to aggravated life imprisonment in 2022. The culmination of his first case before this Court was the 2019 judgment finding violations of Articles 5 § 1, 5 § 4 and 18 and a direction to the Government to secure his immediate release. As that did not happen, the Committee of Ministers invoked infringement proceedings and as a result the Grand Chamber found in 2022 that Türkiye had failed to meet its legal obligation under Article 46(1) to comply with the 2019 judgment because of its failure to release Mr Kavala from detention. These judgments are critical because of their very clear findings about the criminal case against Mr Kavala. He was charged with attempting to overthrow the Government by force and violence under Article 312 of the Criminal Code and attempting to overthrow the constitutional order through force and violence under Article 309. However, having carefully considered all the documents and evidence relied on by the authorities, this Court found that there was not even sufficient evidence to establish a reasonable suspicion of his commission of any of these offences. Not only that, but the measures taken against him were based on facts that could not reasonably be considered as behaviour criminalised under domestic law and were essentially related to his exercise of Convention rights, completely lawful acts as the Court underlined, and the ordinary legitimate activities on the part of a human rights defender. Therefore, Article 5(1) was violated because of the lack of reasonable suspicion that Mr Kavala had committed any offence. The Court also found a violation of Article 18 because the criminal proceedings pursued an ulterior purpose, reducing Mr Kavala to silence. The Court noted the four years of delay in bringing the case after the events in question, which was totally unexplained, and found it significant that the charges were laid shortly after two speeches made by President Erdoğan who alleged that Mr Kavala financed terrorists in the context of the Gezi events. The Grand Chamber clearly held that the 2019 judgement applied to the totality of the charges against Mr Kavala. As for the ruse of charging him with different crimes to continuously keep him in detention, the Grand Chamber held that this constituted a mere reclassification of the same facts, which amounts to the circumvention of the law. Indeed, over the last eight years, the underlying allegations and so-called evidence have remained essentially the same in spite of what the Government tries to argue. The Court found that it was clear that his conviction was based on facts, quote, "which the Court had scrutinized with particular care in its initial judgement on account of the clear absence of reasonable suspicion," unquote. And that the facts listed in the 28th September 2020 Bill of Indictment were essentially identical to those already examined by the Court. The Grand Chamber concluded that the findings of a violation of Articles 18 and 5(1) "vitiated any action resulting from the charges relating to the Gezi events and the attempted coup." These findings are critical to this case because they relate to the same arbitrary criminal process which has been pursued to this day for ulterior political purposes. Nevertheless, the Government continues to push the conspiratorial narrative to justify why Mr Kavala was convicted and sentenced to aggravated life imprisonment. Their narrative alleges that the Gezi Park protests amounted to an insurrection and that they were planned by George Soros and other external actors and directed and financed by Mr Kavala in order to overthrow the Government by force and violence. But this narrative is simply not justified by any objective evidence, as this Court has already found. The wider rule of law in the human rights context in Turkey is, of course, an essential element of this case, which is made abundantly clear by the 17 third-party interveners, including the Commissioner for Human Rights, four Turkish-based organisations and 11 other international bodies, among them associations of judges and lawyers. The interventions show that Government critics, including opposition politicians and journalists, face a combination of legal, administrative and judicial pressure and criminalisation. This is also the case for human rights defenders. The interventions highlight the degradation of the independence and impartiality of the judiciary, especially in politically sensitive cases, aided by the weakening or removal of key legal and constitutional safeguards, as well as governmental control of the Council of Judges and Prosecutors, and direct political pressure publicly exerted by President Erdoğan and other Ministers, which has led to judges and prosecutors close to the Government being given key roles. They also trace the non-implementation of judgments of the Constitutional Court by the lower courts and the Court of Cassation, including for two of the defendants in the Gezi proceedings, Can Atalay and Tayfun Kahraman, as well as the non-implementation of European Court judgments, egged on by public statements from Government ministers reflecting outright resistance. The interventions also reveal patterns of prosecutorial practice in producing overly long indictments, which lack sound legal analysis, target legitimate democratic activity protected under the Convention, and which are insufficient to establish the crime in question. We also see the initiation of multiple overlapping criminal charges based on identical or similar facts and legal grounds. Criminal proceedings initiated on the basis of overly broad interpretations of criminal offences and courts issuing release orders that are not executed because new detention orders are issued at the same time. Mr President, Each of these issues arises in Mr Kavala’s case too. I turn now to the question of domestic remedies. Since October 2017 to date, Mr Kavala has pursued numerous domestic court applications, including more than 50 appeals against his ongoing detention, appeals against his conviction, and four petitions to the Constitutional Court, two of which remain pending, although they were lodged in June 2022 and October 2023 respectively. He also invoked a series of extraordinary legal remedies under the Criminal Procedure Code in 2024. All of this has been to no avail whatsoever. It is beyond any doubt that he has exhausted domestic remedies as he has done everything he can reasonably do to apply to the Turkish courts to secure his release from unlawful detention. The domestic courts have proved themselves unable to provide an effective remedy, as they have repeatedly failed to consider either of this Court's judgments. This is true of the lower-instance courts, the Appeal Court, the Court of Cassation and the Constitutional Court. The Constitutional Court cannot be considered an effective domestic remedy in this case. Firstly, because its December 2020 judgment failed to provide Mr Kavala with a remedy. Secondly, because of the inexplicable excessive delays in adjudicating on his cases. Thirdly, because of the frequent ministerial public statements criticising its handling of cases concerning the Gezi Park convictions. And fourthly, because its decisions in these cases have been openly rejected by the lower courts and the Court of Cassation on three occasions, twice in the Can Atalay case, once in the case of Tayfun Kahraman. The Court of Cassation even filed a complaint to the prosecutor against nine Constitutional Court judges for supposedly violating the Constitution in the Can Atalay case. The pattern is very clear. It's true of other cases too, that under overt political pressure from the President and Ministers, it unquestionably does not provide an effective remedy in the light of the violation of Article 18 in this case. The Government argues that this case is inadmissible because Mr Kavala should still have waited for the Constitutional Court to rule on his two outstanding applications before coming to Strasbourg. It places substantial reliance on the 2013 admissibility decision in Uzun v. Turkey, a case about a boundary dispute, in which the Court assessed the newly introduced individual system of complaint before the Constitutional Court, finding that in principle it should be invoked by applicants. However, the circumstances of this case are fundamentally different to that case, which predated the 2018 Constitutional reforms. For the reasons I've already outlined, the Constitutional Court does not provide an effective remedy in this particular case. Mr President, I turn now to Article 5. Article 5(1) was violated from 10 December 2019 to the date of confirmation of Mr Kavala's conviction on 28 September 2023 as a result of his continuing arbitrary deprivation of liberty in line with this Court's finding in 2019. Despite what the Government still tries to maintain, nothing of substance changed. His detention was based on the same facts which had been assessed by this Court in 2019, which found that there was not even sufficient evidence to justify his arrest. Although the authorities changed the nature of the charges, no new facts or evidence of any substance were introduced by the authorities. The Grand Chamber in 2022 had to carefully assess this very point. It found that the limited new evidence put forward by the prosecutor in February 2020 in relation to the charges under 309, quote, "did not contain any new fact related to the constituent elements of the alleged offense." As regards the charge of espionage under Article 328, it found that neither the decisions on Mr Kavala's detention nor the bill of indictment contained any substantially new facts relating to the constituent elements of that offense. It concluded that, quote, "as during Mr Kavala's initial detention, the investigating authorities once again referred to numerous acts which had been carried out entirely lawfully in order to justify his continued pretrial detention," unquote. This had also been the conclusion of the dissenting judges in the Constitutional Court in December 2020. This breach of Mr Kavala's right to liberty persisted after his conviction. A conviction cannot be the result of a flagrant denial of justice, as for Ilascu and Navalny (No. 4). Accordingly, his arbitrary detention post-conviction cannot satisfy Article 5 § 1(a). Mr Kavala's rights under Article 5 § 4 have also been breached because of the failure to provide a sufficiently swift review of the lawfulness of his detention. He petitioned the Constitutional Court on 9 June 2022, and his conviction became final on 28 September 2023, a period of more than 15 months. Article 5 § 4 is applicable to the period after the first-instance conviction, in accordance with Stollenwerk v. Germany and Yılmaz, Eryılmaz and Turkey, because Turkish domestic law does not distinguish between the pre- and post-conviction periods in relation to procedural guarantees in the context of challenges brought against detention. Aligned with this Court's case-law, 15 months is too long to meet the Court's very strict standards where individual liberty is at stake. Such a period is inexplicable and unjustifiable, especially in this case in the light of two prior European Court judgments. In fact, the Court's case-law is clear that, as an exception to the incorporation doctrine, Article 5 § 4 applies where new questions concerning the legality of the detention arise, even after the final conviction, cases such as Todorov and Others v. Luxembourg. And here this applies because of the findings of the Grand Chamber in 2022, and therefore the time period for Article 5 § 4 extends to today, that's four years and nine months. Thank you, Mr President, I now give the floor to Professor Çalı. - Thank you, and I now call Professor Çalı. Dear Mr President, dear members of the Court, Mr Kavala has been denied a fair trial in serious breach of Article 6 of the Convention. The Government has not provided any evidence to show how the domestic courts compensated for the deficiencies already identified by this Court under its review of Articles 5 and 18 to respect Mr Kavala's right to a fair trial. On the contrary, there is an abundance of evidence showing that it was a manifestly unfair trial that led to Mr Kavala's conviction and sentencing to aggravated life imprisonment. Let me outline five reasons as to why there has been a violation of Article 6. First is the complete disregard for the two European Court judgments by the domestic courts. The findings of the European Court's judgments were not mentioned, let alone considered, in the decisions convicting Mr Kavala. Yet extensive legal engagement with the European Court's judgments was the only way for Mr Kavala's trial to be fair. As this Court held in Mammadov No. 2 and Ismayilova No. 4, the present case concerns the same criminal proceedings against the applicant, and the same charges stemming from the same events. This resulted in an unfair examination of the criminal charges against the applicant and also deprived him of his right to a recent Court judgment. Second, Mr Kavala's right to receive a fair trial from an independent and impartial court was violated. The three judges who delivered an acquittal judgment in Mr Kavala's case on 18 February 2020 were subject to disciplinary investigations that resulted in a decision of misconduct. Subsequently, a former AKP candidate was appointed as a judge in this case. The disciplinary punishment of three judges who released and acquitted Mr Kavala clearly constitutes a chilling effect on all judges who subsequently tried him. This is due to the clear political influence and control over the Council of Judges and Prosecutors. The Council is responsible for all judicial appointments, including appointments to the Court of Cassation, the career progression of judges, the geographical location of judges, and their disciplinary investigation. And this Council has 13 members. The Minister of Justice presides over this Council and his deputy is an ex officio member. The Minister of Justice is appointed by the President. In addition, the President directly elects four other members of this Council. And the remaining seven members are elected by a qualified majority of the Parliament, which de facto means appointment by the Justice and Development Party, whose leader is the President and its Alliance partner. The Venice Commission in its 2024 report refers to a climate of fear and submission amongst judges in Turkey due to the political control over the Council of Judges and Prosecutors. The Government states that the appointment of a former Member of Parliament candidate, in this case a Justice and Development Party candidate, as a judge in this case is a normal practice. However, according to the well-established case law of this Court, a judge's political affiliations having links to the case at issue constitutes an objective fear of lack of impartiality. Given that the President and the leader of the Justice and Development Party is a civil party to the proceedings in this case, this case, this test is clearly met. Third, Mr Kavala's right to equality of arms in this trial is violated.He was not able to access the digital audio files, which included transcripts of his telephone conversations, indeed the bulk of evidence that is presented to you, verify their accuracy, or examine their evidentiary value in accordance with the Criminal Procedure Code. In addition, he was denied the right to have key witnesses heard in this case. And fourth, the presumption of innocence of Mr Kavala was violated throughout this trial by prejudicial statements by the highest executive officials. Even a television series funded by taxpayers' money was aired on state television, which clearly suggested that Mr Kavala was guilty. And fifth, a period of almost six years, which breached his right to a fair hearing within a reasonable time. And this length of time was marked with procedural irregularities which cannot be legally explained. Notably, the third regional Court of Appeal quashed Mr Kavala's acquittal by second-guessing the outcome of a case not yet decided by the Court of Cassation. This led Mr Kavala's trial to be irregularly moved from one court, the court that acquitted him, to another court, and then it being joined by the trial of a group of football fans for the unrest during the Gezi Park protests, a large group of individuals he has never met in his life. His case was subsequently separated from the trial of the football fans, causing significant delays in the proceedings, again not possible to explain, in contravention of what was at stake for the applicant as per Kudła v. Poland, his immediate release from unlawful detention. Dear Mr President, Mr Kavala's conviction for the crime of attempting to overthrow the Government by use of force and violence or preventing it from fulfilling its duties under Article 312 of the Criminal Code is a clear violation of the foreseeability test under Article 7. Now the material element of this crime requires evidence that Mr Kavala is responsible for the use of force and violence which is capable of overthrowing the Government. This material element is manifestly not met in this case for two clear reasons. First, there is absolutely no evidence presented in the domestic court judgments that links Mr Kavala to any use of force or violence during the Gezi Park protests by any group, let alone evidence that Mr Kavala directed or financed any group that used force and/or violence. Second, there is no evidence that the Gezi Park protests could be characterized as use of force and violence in an attempt to overthrow the Government. The domestic courts provide two specific reasons for this characterization. First is the clashes between protesters and the police in front of the then Prime Minister's office in Beşiktaş, Istanbul, around 2 and 3 June 2013. And second is the alleged involvement of members of terrorist organizations in the protests more generally. With regard to the first allegation, the Court of Cassation judgment states that the protesters in front of the then Prime Minister's office in Beşiktaş were not able to give the impression that the Government had fallen. This would not have been rationally possible, not least because the seat of the Turkish Government is in the capital, Ankara, and not in Istanbul. Significantly, there is no evidence whatsoever to show that the Government was not able to go about its daily business throughout the Gezi Park events of May and June 2013. In addition, the Government held meetings with civil society representatives and organisations during these protests, including meetings that the then Prime Minister Erdoğan held with groups of protesters on the 12 and 14 June 2013. And even more significantly, the football fans case, the case which Kavala's trial was irregularly joined and separated again, in this case, which was specifically about the incidents that happened in front of the then Prime Minister's office in Beşiktaş, this trial has concluded on the 29th of December 2025, with all of the football fans being acquitted under Article 312. Now, with regard to the alleged involvement of terrorist organizations in the protests, there has never been any public investigation linked to the Gezi Park protests that looked into any incident of use of force and violence by any of the alleged terrorist groups alleged to be involved in these protests. In addition, no one has ever been convicted as a member of any terrorist organization under Article 312 in relation to these protests. Now, I must underline once again that Mr Kavala's conviction judgment provides no link between any alleged terrorist organization, named or otherwise, and Mr Kavala. The mental element of Article 312 requires evidence to show that Mr Kavala intended to overthrow the Government by use of force and violence. However, the totality of the material provided in the domestic court judgments constitutes one photo of Mr Kavala during the Gezi Park protests, telephone conversations that he had discussing the need to organize events to talk about the protests and the disproportionate use of force by the police, discussions about sending letters to the European Parliament, to the Council of Europe, and to European States, members of the Council of Europe, concerning human rights violations during the Gezi Park events. And for clarity, this European Court has already reviewed all this material which constitutes the alleged material and mental aspects of the crime. Now, this material shows that Mr Kavala, as a human rights defender, was critical of the Government's way of handling Gezi Park protests, and he was concerned with the excessive use of tear gas which caused serious injury and death during these protests. It also shows that peaceful and lawful activities of a human rights defender, such as raising human rights concerns before European institutions, were treated as constituting the mental element to overthrow the Government with force and violence. It is worth emphasizing that when Article 312 was drafted, the term "use of force and violence" was added precisely to exclude freedom of expression and association from the scope of this crime. Now, the Government submits that the application of Article 312 in this case is compatible with the previous case law of the Court of Cassation. Now, the case law referred to in their submissions concern individuals who were members of the armed forces, or individuals who were also charged with either establishing an armed terrorist group or being a member of a terrorist organization. The factual basis of the Court of Cassation case law references that are presented to you concern people who have access to weapons and troops, and therefore bear no resemblance to the facts of this case. Dear President, The conviction of Mr Kavala has gravely violated his rights to freedom of expression and association. The heart of the Article 10 and 11 violations in this case is the criminalization of the exercise of Mr Kavala's rights. This is an absolutely arbitrary restriction of his rights, is not prescribed by law and is utterly disproportionate. Dear members of the Court, Violation of Article 18 constitutes a distinct and fundamental aspect of this case. Without any doubt, Article 18 applies to Articles 6, 10 and 11, but Article 18 also applies to Article 7 in this case. There was no intent on the side of the drafters of the Convention to limit the application of Article 18 to any of the rights provided for by the Convention. Rather, the travaux evidence is overwhelming that Article 18 was introduced as an additional safeguard against the abuse of power by States, regardless of the substantive rights that may provide the context of such abuse. If there are violations of Article 18 with Articles 5 and 6 in politically motivated prosecutions and trials, then a violation of Article 18 and 7 should not be precluded. In our written submissions, we provided the Court with the following evidence. One, insistence on exclusively relying on the same irrelevant and insufficient evidence that this Court has already reviewed. Two, lack of succinct statement of facts in the domestic court judgments, which this Court has already identified. Three, manifest procedural irregularities under Article 6. Four, the exercise of Convention rights as the basis for conviction to aggravated life imprisonment. Five, the profoundly arbitrary sentencing of Mr Kavala to the heaviest possible criminal sentence. Six, correlations between the prejudicial statements of the highest executive officials about Mr Kavala and the very content of the domestic court judgments. Seven, the absolute non-engagement and non-compliance with the findings of this Court's judgments in the totality of the trial. Dear President, Article 3 has been violated in this case. The minimum threshold of Article 3 has clearly been reached in this case due to the extremely long and unlawful deprivation of liberty of an innocent man. In addition, his wait to be released and to be with his family has been in defiance of two judgments of this Court. This has caused prolonged anguish and uncertainty to a human being who has a legitimate expectation to be free. Dear judges of the Grand Chamber, dear Mr President, Mr Kavala, an innocent man and a human rights defender, has been incarcerated for eight years, five months and counting. For the last three of these years, this has been in isolation. This unprecedented situation requires the application of Article 46 in this case. Accordingly, we request that the Court require, under Article 46, that the national authorities immediately release Mr Kavala from detention and formally acquit him and allow him to continue his life free from any future risk of arbitrary deprivation of liberty or any violations of his Convention rights. We respectfully request that the Grand Chamber deliver a judgment as soon as reasonably practicable. - I thank you and I now call Mr O'Flaherty, Commissioner for Human Rights. Thank you, Mr President, distinguished members of the Court. This case, of course, concerns the rights of Mr Kavala as an individual. At the same time, it points to the ongoing structural challenges facing human rights defenders in Turkey. I address the Court to share insight from my own work in a manner which I hope will further inform you about these issues. My intervention also touches on the enforcement of judgments of this Court. The present case concerns the continued detention of Mr Kavala and the criminal proceedings which resulted in his conviction to aggravated life imprisonment after this Court issued two judgments mandating his release. The non-execution of those judgments is at the origin of the present case. Since taking up my mandate, I have engaged with the Turkish authorities and raised with them on more than one occasion the non-implementation of the judgments. In November 2024, during my first visit to Turkey, I visited Mr Kavala in prison. I was impressed by his integrity, his resilience and his commitment to the cause of human rights. In December 2025, I again visited the country and during that visit, I engaged with the authorities, with legal experts and with civil society organisations. In Kavala v. Turkey, this Court examined the proceedings against Mr Kavala in light of his activities as a human rights defender. You established beyond reasonable doubt that the measures complained of pursued the ulterior purpose of reducing Mr Kavala to silence. Further, in view of the charges that were brought against him, you considered that the contested measures were likely to have a dissuasive effect on the work of human rights defenders. The non-execution of the general measures required in the Kavala case is indeed indicative of the situation as I observed it as recently as 2025. During my visit, my interlocutors reported a continuation of pressure on civil society, human rights defenders, lawyers, journalists and opposition politicians. They drew my attention to disproportionate restrictions on freedom of expression, peaceful assembly and association, the continued misuse of criminal and anti-terrorism provisions and issues with regard to the independence and impartiality of the judiciary. I am concerned that criminal law and anti-terrorism provisions continue to be broadly interpreted and applied to actions that should be considered as legitimate democratic activity. This includes, for example, non-violent acts, critical expression, association, and human rights advocacy. Furthermore, reports indicate that domestic courts tend to initiate criminal proceedings without sufficient or adequate reasoning and without a clear link between any alleged conduct and violence, and incitement to violence or other elements required to justify criminal sanctions. I have also received reports of repeated restrictions on demonstrations and assemblies, disproportionately impacting certain groups, with police using unnecessary force to disperse peaceful protest. I have been informed that journalists, opposition politicians, lawyers and ordinary citizens have faced criminal investigation simply for voicing dissent. In addition, bar associations and legal professionals face pressure and criminal prosecution for their work. Associations working on human rights suffer from legal, administrative and judicial constraints, including arbitrary audits and criminal cases in which advocacy is treated as evidence of wrongdoing. These reports indicate persistent problems regarding the rights to freedom of expression, association, and peaceful assembly and echo problems identified in judgments of this Court that are still pending execution before the Committee of Ministers, indeed for periods ranging from 9 to 20 years. The failure of the authorities to resolve these issues lies behind repeated human rights violations today. Allow me to turn to the administration of justice and the protection of human rights within the justice system. This Court assessed aspects of the functioning of the justice system in the Kavala v. Turkey case. During my recent visit, I was informed about continuing issues concerning the independence and impartiality of the judiciary, the right to a fair trial and regarding the operation of the Turkish Constitutional Court. Concerning the independence and impartiality of the judiciary and judges, I note that problems have been exacerbated by several constitutional and legislative amendments that alter the composition and selection procedure of the Council of Judges and Prosecutors. These were contrary to recommendations of international human rights and expert bodies, including two opinions of the Venice Commission. And this Court indeed has referred to such matters in the cases of Selahattin Demirtaş and Yüksel Yalçınkaya. Turning to issues relating to the right to a fair trial, multiple practices raise concerns related to legal certainty and foreseeability. These include overly long indictments, shortcomings regarding legal analysis and the quality of evidence, the use of secret witnesses, and the initiation of multiple overlapping criminal cases based on identical or similar facts and legal grounds. Equally, the legal process is threatened by the non-execution of release orders with new and simultaneously issued arrest and detention orders. I have also been informed that the principle of equality of arms is undermined inasmuch as lawyers are restricted in the exercise of their professional activities. Finally, I turn to considerations regarding the Turkish Constitutional Court. I note that Mr Kavala has two applications pending before the Court, one since 2022 and another since 2023. These respectively concern his detention and conviction in the Gezi Park case and the upholding by the Court of Cassation of his conviction. The effectiveness of the individual application mechanism before the Turkish Constitutional Court constitutes a central judicial safeguard, but in this regard I would wish to raise two matters. First, issues have been brought to my attention by my interlocutors about the Constitutional Court's slowness in reviewing individual complaints. Despite the Committee of Ministers' call to strengthen the Constitutional Court's priority criteria, no measures have been taken or are envisaged. As a result, cases of deprivation of liberty are not addressed with the speediness required under the criteria of this Court. Second, there have been several recent instances where Constitutional Court judgments have not been implemented by the lower courts. I draw the Court's attention in particular to the cases of Can Atalay and Tayfun Kahraman, co-defendants of the applicant in the Gezi Park case. In conclusion, Mr President, Honourable Members, I believe that the contemporary situation for human rights defenders and civil society in Turkey, together with issues of the maladministration of justice, are highly relevant in the present case, and I encourage the Court to give them due consideration. - I thank you for your submissions, and I now invite the judges of the Grand Chamber wishing to do so to put their questions to the parties. Thank you very much, Mr President. I have one question to the respondent Government and one question to the representatives of the applicant, and I have one question for both parties jointly. First, I have a question for the Government, but then the applicant's representatives are obviously free to comment and answer if they so wish. And it is the following. It's about domestic remedies and their exhaustion, and about the fact that the applicant still has two proceedings pending before the Constitutional Court. The first one concerns the priority policy of the Constitutional Court in cases pending before it, and where the applicant is deprived of his liberty, either in pretrial detention or following a conviction. Are there statistics, for instance, about the length and delays? Is there a specific profile of cases that tend to take more time? I have one question for the representatives of the applicant, but of course the representatives of the Government may also comment if they so wish. Both in the written and now today in the oral pleadings, the representatives of the applicant argue, albeit rather succinctly, that there has been a violation of Article 5, paragraph 1(a), for a period after Mr Kavala's conviction in 2022 because the criminal proceedings against him represented a flagrant denial of justice. May I kindly ask you to expand on that concept within the present context, both as to its rationale and as a matter of Convention law in respect of specifically Article 5, paragraph 1(a). Secondly, as to the elements that in your view would allow this Court to conclude that there was in the current case such a flagrant denial of justice. This takes me to my third question, which goes to both parties. It relates to the complaint under Article 3 of the Convention, and in particular the question whether the conviction to an aggravated life sentence is a violation of Article 3. The question is related again to admissibility and non-exhaustion and the existence or not of an effective remedy in this respect. This element is a bit underdeveloped, one might say, in the written submissions by the parties and has not been touched upon at all in the oral pleadings. This needs a bit of an explanation from my side. We have before us, I think, a development when it comes to this question, at least in three stages. First, we have the judgment from this Court in 2015, Kafkaris v. Cyprus, where the Court said that there was no remedy available in Turkish law against such a sentence. And it needs to be mentioned that this case referred to facts prior to the establishment of the individual complaint mechanism before the Constitutional Court. Then, four or five years later, in December 2018, this Court, in a Chamber formation, in the case of Tekin and Arslan v. Turkey, which was mentioned in the written pleadings by the Government, said that the individual complaint mechanism before the Constitutional Court is, in fact, to be considered an effective remedy in the case of an aggravated life sentence. This has been followed up in subsequent practice from committees and also at the level of single-judge decisions. Then, and this is the third stage, which we possibly find ourselves now, after this, when the Court has started to receive new complaints from applicants in Turkey, where the applicants actually went to the Constitutional Court, applying the remedy that this Court found to be effective. Actually, the applicant in one of the committee cases just referred to is one of the four cases we already communicated. And what we can see from this is, and now I'm getting closer to my question, one of the reasons why we found this is the clear pattern in the case law of the Constitutional Court, namely that these applicants before the Constitutional Court have all been declared inadmissible. Without any particular clear reasoning, which is often the case when you declare a case inadmissible. But there are no examples before the Constitutional Court that it has actually accepted such a complaint. And we have so far, and this is really something I need to have confirmed from the parties, so far to my knowledge, no ruling from the Constitutional Court in respect of this matter. And I ask both parties to, in light of this, to reflect upon and explain and express their view on whether there is still, in light of this, an effective remedy before the Constitutional Court, taking also into account the apparent ongoing execution before the Committee of Ministers in respect of previous judgments and whether the Constitutional Court has found violations of Article 3 in similar cases. Thank you so much. ---- Thank you, Mr President. I have one factual question for the applicant. Following the Court's Chamber judgment in 2019, the applicant was detained on new charges in 2020 and challenged the lawfulness of this new detention order before the Constitutional Court, where that court decided in December 2020 that his rights under Article 5 of the Convention had not been violated, as you also mentioned in your pleadings. We can see that the applicant did not lodge a new application with our Court as regards that judgment of the Constitutional Court. So I would like to ask whether there was any specific reason for not lodging an application before our Court following that Constitutional Court judgment. Thank you. --- I have one question to the applicant and also one question to the Government. To the applicant, as regards Article 5, the Government argued that the Court has already decided on the right to liberty issue in the previous judgment, and this is an issue of execution by the Committee of Ministers. You framed it as an ongoing violation, therefore my question is whether you would argue that in any case where the judgment is not implemented, the Court should have a policy to look at it, or whether there are any special arguments as regards this case. As regards the Government, it's in light of Article 6, if you could comment on the applicants' argument about independence of the national court. The applicants mentioned that three judges who acquitted the applicant have afterwards been subject to disciplinary sanctions, and there are also, if I understood correctly, criminal proceedings against the Constitutional Court judges. I would like to ask you first whether you can comment a little bit on that, about these three judges, whether there were any disciplinary proceedings against them before, and also about this issue of any proceedings brought as regards Constitutional Court judges. Thank you. --- Thank you, Mr President. I have one question to the Government following the questions asked by Vice-President Bårdsen. In its judgment of December 2019, in the case Kavala v. Turkey, the Court held that the total duration of the Constitutional Court's review of the lawfulness of the applicant's pretrial detention, namely one year, five months, and 29 days, could not be considered compatible with the speediness requirements of Article 5, paragraph 4. The same conclusion was confirmed in the Grand Chamber infringement judgment in July 2022. As already mentioned here, the applicant lodged an individual application with the Constitutional Court in June 2022 in order to challenge his detention, and these proceedings have been pending for three years and eight months now. The second application was lodged in October 2023, and that application has been pending for more than two years and four months. The second application is—have there been particular reasons justifying such a long duration in dealing with the applicant's detention, which is covered by Article 5 of the Convention, and having known that there are two judgments of this Court? Thank you very much. --- I will call the question for the Government, following on from Judge Bårdsen's question. You argue in paragraph 17 of your submissions on the basis of an average length of proceedings before the Constitutional Court, about three years, roughly. Would you agree, as argued by the applicant in paragraph 88, that in Turkish law, a person is treated as being on remand until a conviction becomes final, so that the relevant length of the Constitutional Court proceedings of 9 June 2022 is that applicable to proceedings regarding pretrial detention, and not the general Constitutional Court proceedings? And as a supplement to that, how long on average do you say that proceedings before the Constitutional Court challenging pretrial detention should take? And secondly, I have a question for the applicant. You would have seen the figures in paragraph 17 of the Government's submissions for the average duration of the Constitutional Court proceedings of three years. What precise procedural steps do you say should normally have occurred by now, before the Constitutional Court, in the 24 October 2023 application? Thank you. If there are no other questions, the Court will now withdraw for 25 minutes, following which the parties will be able to submit brief observations and reply to the other submissions, and also to reply to questions from the judges. So the public hearing is suspended. Thank you, Mr President. So, what I can say is, again, with all my respect to the Court's judgments and the Government as well, paragraph 146 of the 2019 judgment, I just quote, "The acts charged by the prosecutor's office are legal activities, isolated acts which, at first sight, are unrelated to each other, or activities which were clearly related to the exercise of a Convention right." This is actually what the applicant has been alleging since then. This is very interesting because this judgment has become, as it were, a principal argument, a circular argument. When they appeared before, the applicant appeared before the Turkish courts, "Hey, Turkish courts, I have a judgment secured from a European court, and you cannot try me." Put bluntly, that's the essence of the defence. I hope in light of our written observations and the final outcome of the proceedings. By the way, 2013 was not an easy year, and the ensuing years for Turkey were not easy either, including a coup d'état attempt. You have several cases now arriving at the base of Strasbourg. With all respect to the nature of the offences, historical, political, and social context should be taken into due consideration by any court of law. The final judgment, the Court of Cassation judgment, provides a recent judgment, in contrast to the allegations of the applicant. I don't claim that the criminal justice system is a Fordist assembly line, that we perfectly, neatly, organise, and everything is done perfectly. My argument is that ascribing, in such an existential crisis, to a Government something beyond that, Article 18 allegations, I think, was a bit premature. So, without, again, my respect, returning to the 2019 judgment, when it applied to the Government's case, the Court adopted a piecemeal approach to the evidence. In my oral observations, I said another approach should be taken, the overall assessment approach, or "Gesamtbetrachtung". But when I come to Article 18, your standard of proof regarding Article 18, paragraph 232, the Court says, "Reducing the applicant to silence, the work of human rights defenders." Two arguments. But there, you apply the standard, all the conditions taken as a whole, or taken, analysed collectively. So, this is why we are here again in 2026. And one further remark, pretrial detention or the investigation stage in general in continental Europe suffers from an imbalance. We adopted a systemic style from the French in the 19th century towards the end of the Ottoman Empire, and later on during the Republic, we adopted the Strafprozessordnung. And the essence of this systemic style is keeping some inquisitorial elements intact during the investigation stage. And the full-fledged trial is the essence of the matter. Full hearing, principle of immediacy, oral hearing, etc. So, in such a complex and problematic case, I would say passing judgments at that level of demanding judgments would be at least counterproductive. Now I come to Article 5. Post-conviction detention is obviously not a violation of Article 5. The Court reiterates that a person convicted at first instance cannot be regarded as being detained for the purpose of bringing him before the competent legal authority on reasonable suspicion of having committed an offence. As to the conviction judgment rendered on 25 April 2022, by the Istanbul 13th Assize Court under Article 312 of the Criminal Code, the applicant's deprivation of liberty falls to be examined under Article 5 § 1(a). The applicant did not bring before the Court within the prescribed period the complaints under Article 5 regarding detention pursuant to Articles 309 and 328 of the Turkish Penal Code following the Court's violation decision dated 10 December 2019. Accordingly, the applicant's Article 5 complaints concerning the pre-conviction detention should be inadmissible because there were two proceedings, 2019 judgment, 2022 judgment, you have already dealt with this case and it will be an idem if you do so again in this case. So in our opinion, the present case, the applicant's detention under Article 5 § 1(a) satisfies all the conditions established in the Court's jurisprudence. The issue of whether a period of detention is reasonable cannot be assessed in abstracto; whether it is reasonable for an accused to remain in detention must be assessed in each case according to its special features. Continued detention can be justified in a given case only if there are specific indications of a genuine requirement of public interest which, notwithstanding the presumption of innocence, outweighs the rule of respect for individual liberty. Now, Article 6. When the Court deals with Article 6 of this case, I should reiterate, prior findings on detention do not automatically determine the fairness of analysis of the subsequent criminal proceedings. Fairness must be assessed as a whole. The obligation to examine with particular care the acts and the evidence giving rise to proceedings should not be understood as an obligation to disregard evidence in the case file or to acquit the accused person. In the criminal proceedings, the applicant and his lawyers had access to all pieces of evidence. By the way, they brought an argument before the Court just today regarding digital evidence. They did not bring that before the Court. We also reject their argument in that regard. The requirements of the principles of equality of arms and adversarial proceedings were complied with. But again, context matters. I want to draw the Court's attention to an earlier, much earlier case of this Court, regarding RAF cases in Germany. Ensslin, Baader and Raspe v. Germany from 8 July 1978. I think that was good law. In this regard, the presumption of innocence could not be invoked in respect of the present case. The guarantees secured by Article 6 § 2 devolve upon the Court upon a tried charge. To the extent that the campaign — now we talk about the 1970s — that applicants who were found dead in their cells in the morning. The Court said, "According to the Government, account must be taken of the context in which the statements were made." And there were really statements like bandits, criminals, gang of murderers. And the Court observed that the press, even the authorities responsible for crime policy, cannot be expected to refrain from all statements — not about the guilt of the accused persons, but about their dangerous character where uncontested information is available to them. They were tried by professional judges, not by a jury or media. And this case of the Court shows us two things — gravity and magnitude of the crime, and the trial of a public figure creates a legitimate realm for Article 10 rights for those who express an opinion on the case at hand. Furthermore, the timing of assertions made by the politicians, referred to by applicants in their annexes, should be taken with caution by the Court because in the case of Konstas v. Greece, the Court said, "First of all, that the offending remarks were made after the applicant had been convicted at first instance, and while his appeal was still pending, must be taken into account." And the Court sets the principle. On this point, the Court considers that Article 6 § 2 of the Convention in no way prevents the competent authorities from referring to the applicant's existing conviction, even though the question of his guilt has not yet been definitively resolved. In this case, this is not a big issue. They refer only to statements by politicians between the first instance case and the Court of Cassation case, and in one of which the head of state was asked by an international media outlet regarding this case, and he responded, "Turkey is a state of law, and this is a matter to be dealt with by judges." This is just a tiny example for you to check the annexes carefully. So, I should also note that the fictional works or the newspapers' interest was sparked by the trial of a public figure, so this should also be taken into account by the Court when assessing the impugned assertions. The Government points out that the guarantee secured by Article 6 § 3(d) does not embrace an unlimited right to call any person the accused wishes as a witness, nor the possibility of calling witnesses on subjects which cannot help to elucidate the truth. And the requests for the hearing of witnesses at the last hearing were regarded by the Turkish court, in accordance with the relevant procedure and relevant provisions of the Criminal Procedure Code, as an attempt to prolong the trial. Lastly, I would like to draw the Court's attention to the claim of a flagrant denial of justice. I would like to refer here to Wilcox and Hurford v. the United Kingdom. The Court has indicated that flagrant denial of justice is a stringent test of unfairness. It goes beyond mere irregularities or lack of safeguards in the trial procedure, such as might result in a breach of Article 6 if occurring within the Contracting State itself. What is required is a breach of the principle of a fair trial guaranteed by Article 6 which is so fundamental as to amount to a nullification or destruction of the very essence of the right guaranteed by Article 6. These include trial in absentia, with no possibility subsequently to obtain a fresh determination of the merits of the charge, a trial which is summary in nature and conducted with a total disregard for the rights of the defence, and detention without any access to an independent and impartial tribunal to have the legality of the detention reviewed. The deliberate and systematic refusal of access to a lawyer — none of which were the case in the present case. So regarding a particular judge, they keep referring to this judge. There are some factual issues. That judge was a pre-candidate in 2018, not in 2023. It is forbidden in Turkey by law. We can furnish the Court with detailed information that any judge, after entering into service, cannot do politics. This is forbidden in Turkey by law. But if you look at comparative criminal procedure law, such as Germany, having a political association or being a member of a party does not constitute, does not constitute in itself, a recusal ground. So our mother law in criminal procedure law is the German Criminal Procedure Code. That's why I'm referring to the recusal grounds from that particular jurisdiction. So this is, by the way, this amounts, in our view, to judge profiling, looking at the very distant past of a judge, and this is criminalised in certain jurisdictions. And it could be considered as an intervention into the independence of the judiciary. And there is no indication in the case that his remarks were in any shape or form, aside from that distant past pre-candidacy. No concrete, reliable evidence. Otherwise, we are so sensitive about such things. One more last argument regarding the applicant's claims. This notion of violence stems from the 19th century. And it was really dressed up for the violent uprisings in European history or in our history. And like our Greek neighbours, we had the problem of a junta. And there is no mistake in applying such offences to a junta or military coups stemming from the military. But this offence is not only confined to such cases, and physical force against the members was neither necessary nor appropriate. They were expecting a siege of Ankara, the Prime Minister or the Grand National Assembly. That kind of marching towards the Bastille is something from the past. Today's subversive acts or such enterprises, insurrection enterprises, are sort of a cocktail of at least what we had in Gezi. On the one side, you had the traditional terror organisations who did their job violently, Molotov cocktails, everything possible. This is well documented in this judgment. On the other hand, we have these modern, foremost destructive methods. They are recently introduced into English public order legislation, wearing masks in order not to be identified, or occupation movements, as we see in Gilets Jaunes. So that's why approaching this case from the classical perspective of a coup d'état would be misleading. So we also have abundant case law in that regard, that there is no organisation required or that endangerment of this violence is required. And the suitability of acts, I'm here referring to Italian colleague Padovani. The suitability of acts constituted in the conduct translates into their capacity to impede the functions of the aforementioned organs. Impediment is understood not only as an obstacle to the exercise of the function but also compelling the organ to act in one way rather than another. So just wanted to draw your attention to how to look at this offence, not from the lens of only the applicant or the Government. Vice versa. Just look at it from the perspective of comparative law and the criminological core of such offences at issue. They referred to a certain group who not once or three times attacked the Prime Minister's Office and then were acquitted. And this, at first sight, may seem a contradiction in terms. But the acquittal decision concerned only the said persons, and this offence, as stated in the relevant court decision, they were within the collective planning carried out under the applicant's control. They may constitute an important element. So the point is not he mobilised them, the point is what he said. Let's use this mob, let's set this up in such a way that if we can organise it, the public power of this will… of the charge, the named fan group. So he was using this course of effect of that particular group, and these are all in the transcripts of the present case. So this interpretation of the offence is also well justified by the prior case law of the Court. Now I, if I may, want to come to the judges' questions. Judge Bårdsen, first question. The honourable judge asked about the urgent appeal policy of the Constitutional Court. Pursuant to the Constitutional Court's preliminary session decision dated 31 July 2025, seven distinct categories have been established for the review of the individual applications. First of these, the categories outline the criteria for files to be designated as urgent. Accordingly, serious and urgent cases concerning the applicant's life or health, serious and urgent cases related to applicants' personal and family circumstances, serious and urgent cases where the best interests of the child are at stake, applicants falling under Article 73 of the Constitutional Court's internal regulations, cases where detention continues despite the statutory detention period having been exceeded, applications alleging non-execution of the Constitutional Court's ruling on a violation in the relevant application, cases involving serious violations of the right to a fair trial. And the statistics — these are only provisional, we will provide further details in written submissions if we are allowed to do so. It appears that prior to the applicant's petition to the Constitutional Court on 24 October 2023, approximately 1,860 individual applications containing similar complaints were pending. The fact that the Constitutional Court has not yet ruled on these applications either, along with the applicant's case, demonstrates that the applicant's case has not been deliberately delayed or that the applicant has not been subject to discriminatory treatment. We have further statistics, but I think it's better to provide them because there are many numbers; I don't want to confuse the Court. And one of the co-accused, there is a Constitutional Court case about him, and he invoked one of these urgency reasons. He said he was in ill health, and his application was duly considered by the Constitutional Court, and a judgment was delivered. This question regarding life imprisonment without parole, the applicant did not raise it before the Constitutional Court. He complained alleging a violation of Article 3 of the Convention on account of the absence of a possibility of conditional release. In its previous case law, the Court has acknowledged that the individual application to the Constitutional Court constitutes an effective remedy. And regarding the specific case, there has been no application concerning life imprisonment without parole, and that has been declared inadmissible for this reason. However, it is also the case that the Constitutional Court has not, to date, delivered a finding of a violation in such cases. And this case is not only in the Turkish context; I would like to refer to the sea change from Vinter to Hutchinson. This life imprisonment without parole, I think, is a hotly debated issue. And Judge Kucsko-Stadlmayer's question. Now, I have a very detailed briefing here regarding the state of the Turkish judiciary. I will also hand over to our human rights commissioner. Just one paragraph from that. Over the past 20 years, the structure of the Council of Judges and Prosecutors has been reformed twice. Through these changes, the number of members was increased. The representation of lawyers and academics was ensured, thereby strengthening its pluralistic composition, and the General Secretariat and the Inspection Board affiliated with it were established. At the same time, an independent budget was allocated to this Council, and many powers previously held by the Minister of Justice were transferred to it. And an internal effective appeal mechanism was introduced. Taking into account the recommendation in the 2010 Venice Commission report, regarding the fact that members of the judicial council were not elected by the Grand National Assembly of Turkey, there was a constitutional amendment that took place in 2017, stipulating that the majority of members must be elected by the Grand National Assembly of Turkey. Regarding the disciplinary measures concerning the judges involved in the first judgment, this case was investigated upon the calls from the public to look into the details of the case. And for seven hearings, the judges considered available evidence sufficient but only decided at the last hearing that it was not. And in the same investigation, based on the witness statements and his own qualified admissions, the judge GMP expressed his opinion about the pre-judgment. So he said what he was going to deliver as a judgment in this case, and this raised concerns about his procedural impartiality and whether he conducted his services in a consistent and diligent manner. But there is no result from those measures. He is still a judge, an acting judge, and there were no punishment or any other sanction imposed upon these judges. And there are no criminal proceedings which have been initiated against the members of the Constitutional Court, but I can tell you something more in the nature of a general remark. After we introduced in 2010 this individual application, and the Turkish court has become a sort of Turkish Strasbourg, if you like. You know, since the 19th century we have the Conseil d'État, adopted from the French model, and the Court of Cassation again from the French. And you know, until that time we didn't have this review mechanism. And who has the final say about the criminal outcome? We have this grappling, I think, which will be resolved in time, but it's not an easy case because even in those countries like Germany, where they have a long-established individual complaint mechanism, there are criticisms of this supervisory instance, etc. And the same discussions have been imported into the Turkish legal system. It might sound chaotic, but no mala fide can be deduced from that. One should not deduce mala fide from that. It is imperfect. Regarding Article 5 § 1(a), the Government considers that the relevant period for the applicant's complaint should be regarded as a 15-month period between 9 June 2022, the date on which the applicant lodged an individual application before the Constitutional Court, and 28 September 2023, the date on which his conviction was finalised. We consider the 15-month period elapsed before the Constitutional Court should be considered, and it is reasonable. So, if I'm not mistaken, I have tried to respond to all questions, but for the sake of completeness, we can furnish the Court with further written answers. Thank you. - I now call Mr Leach, Ms Çalı for the applicant's side. ---- Thank you, Mr President. I will first respond to some of the judges' questions and then, with your permission, I will hand the floor to Professor Çalı. To Judge Bårdsen, your question about priority policy was aimed at the Government, just to underline the fact that Mr Kavala did invoke the priority policy at the Constitutional Court but to no avail. You then also raised the question about Article 5 § 1(a), which the Government has responded to — flagrant denial of justice. So we have just to be absolutely clear, we've very clearly pleaded a violation of Article 5 § 1 from the outset, and the 15-month period that the Government refers to is too long, that's our case, but the period extends beyond that, we say, because the conviction does amount to a flagrant denial of justice. You heard some of the definition from the UK case that the Government mentioned, and he was right to say it's a stringent test — of course it's a stringent test — and that it goes beyond mere irregularities, that's of course true; both of those are applicable to Mr Kavala's case. It was most recently — the flagrant denial of justice test was most recently defined, as far as I'm aware, just a month ago in the Navalnyy (No. 4) case, where again the Court there said at § 134, a breach of Article 6 which is so fundamental as to amount to the nullification or destruction of the very essence of the right. That was the way in which the Court defined it, and they gave some examples, one of which was a summary trial conducted with a total disregard for the rights of the defence. That we say is very obviously applicable to Mr Kavala's case, given not only the 2019 judgment but also the 2022 judgment, the statement in 2022 by the Grand Chamber that the actions of the authorities vitiate any actions in proceedings in relation to either the Gezi events or the attempted coup, and we say there has been a violation of Article 6 taken together with Article 18 in this case. Then, if I could go on to the question from Judge Yüksel. We were asked why no new application was introduced to this Court after the December 2020 Constitutional Court judgment — why was no application brought at that stage? Well, it's Mr Kavala's arbitrary and unlawful detention — it is a continuing violation of Article 5, and therefore the time limit for lodging in Strasbourg has never started, even today. Of course, the Government say we're lodging in 2024, we're still far too late — a point that we have clearly rejected. To Judge Kucsko-Stadlmayer, your question about Article 5 and the issue of execution and whether the Court should be able to look at that. So again, to be absolutely clear, this case is about the new and ongoing violations since the Court's 2019 judgment. There's an ongoing violation of Article 5 and new violations in relation to Article 6 and other provisions that we've referred to. But you ask about the issue — so this isn't, as we've said very clearly, I think, a case about the implementation of that earlier 2019 judgment, but of course, as we've said, the findings of both the 2019 judgment and the 2022 judgment are essential context to this case, as also the Commissioner for Human Rights has said today. We have referred in our written pleadings to comparable examples in some of the Russian cases where the Court has had to look again. So the Chechen case of Sabanchiyeva and Others and Abuyeva and Others, and the Court looks again — so there's a comparison there because it looks again at the same violation in successive decisions relating to different applicants. And the Court says very clearly that we need to go beyond the previous decisions — there should be additional consequences to the Government's non-compliance. They say in Abuyeva and Others (2015) it demands actions over and above the previous judgment. So that's one of the reasons why we say, in addition to calling for his release, which the Court has already ordered several years ago, that is also why we request a specific provision for his acquittal or nullification of his conviction. And there is ample case law at the Inter-American Court of Human Rights in which the Inter-American Court has done just that. And we can provide the Court with those cases if that's of use. Then in relation to the question from Judge — I'm going to leave that to Professor Çalı. I have one other point before I hand over, which is in response to what the applicants have said in relation to Article 18 and Article 7. So we have pleaded Article 18 in conjunction with Articles 5, 6, 7, 10 and 11. Now in relation to the application of Article 18 with Articles 6 and 7, there's been some uncertainty on that. We now know, of course, from the Ukraine v. Russia (re Crimea) Grand Chamber judgment that Article 18 applies to Article 6. But they do say, which we have dealt with, that Article 18 doesn't apply to Article 7 in that case. And we do ask this Grand Chamber to look again at that point in the particular context of this case. It's dealt with in that case — it's an inter-State case, of course, about the Russian occupation of Ukraine — it's a very, very different context. And the actual Article 18 and Article 7 point is dealt with within two sentences. The reasoning is that Article 18 shouldn't apply to Article 7 because it's non-derogable. It seems to us that that doesn't necessarily follow. And in this case, it follows on from the application of Article 18 with Articles 5 and 6 — so the pretrial circumstances and the conviction circumstances. If you take a holistic interpretation of the Convention, it seems to us only logical and right that Article 18 should also apply to Article 7 and not to preclude that possibility. In this particular case, we say that Articles 309 and 312 of the Criminal Code were deliberately applied to Mr Kavala to silence and punish and target him. So in that context, we do ask you to look again, to apply Article 18 to Article 7, and to find a violation. Mr President, with that, I will, with your permission, hand the floor to Professor Çalı. Thank you. - So I now call Professor Çalı just for the next step of your reply. Thank you. --- Thank you, Mr President. Let me just carry on answering some of the questions that we've received from the judges. One of these questions was about whether there was any effective remedy in relation to Article 3 concerning the review of aggravated life imprisonment. Now, to our knowledge, there is no Constitutional Court case law that would make the Constitutional Court an effective remedy in relation to that very specific question. We're not aware of it. We're aware of the Tekin and Arslan decision of this Court, which suggested that it may be, but as it was also underlined, there is no case law that we would be able to show that this has actually been an effective remedy. But in any case, as we have pleaded before this Court, there are exceptional circumstances as to the effectiveness of all domestic remedies as they apply to the Constitutional Court in this case. And I'd like to underline that we're talking about the circumstances we've outlined in relation to this case. So we would say that in any case, it would not be possible to assume that there will be a remedy, both because there's no evidence of it, but secondly, because of the special circumstances in this case. Now secondly, we also would like to point the Court to its recent judgment in Boltan v. Türkiye in 2019, which is a violation judgment exactly on the same grounds. And in this case, the applicant did not exhaust the domestic remedy before the Constitutional Court, and this was not contested by the Government in these proceedings, which this Court clearly underlined. In our submissions, we were guided by Boltan, which is the latest decision of this Court of 2019 in relation to this case. Now Judge Bressa was asking about the procedures before the Turkish Constitutional Court, and I understand that the question concerned the October application and not the June application of 2022. Before I come to that, I'd like to underline that we have learned also ourselves from the Government's submissions that Mr Kavala's third application, which was lodged in June 2022, was suspended on 25 July 2023, which is a few weeks after the infringement judgment of this Court. Now all of the proceedings in that first application were completely completed, and that case is, as we were informed by the Government's submissions, suspended, and I'm not aware of the procedural explanations as to why that may be the case, and we were not informed about that. In relation to the fourth application, every single submission stage, the replies by the Government, all of this have been completed months and months ago, so the only procedure that's remaining is the delivery of judgment. But I must underline that this is the only procedure remaining for the third application from June 2022, as well as the fourth application from October 2023. I think this concludes our answers to the questions. Of course, we're very happy to answer any questions that may need further clarification. Let me also refer to our detailed submissions to this Court, both in November of last year and also February of this year, where we have detailed quite a lot of the issues. But let me just underline a few things in response to the Government's submissions. Now one of the points that was raised was in relation to the fourth instance doctrine, which this Court is very familiar with, as well as many other courts in Europe and on this planet. And of course, the question of the review of evidence comes in a very special way before constitutional courts as well as before the European Court of Human Rights. In order to assess whether the Convention rights are protected, this Court and any other court in the Council of Europe Member States, any other apex court, must examine the relevance and sufficiency of the evidence in the light of the standards that are set by this Convention. And I think that this is the task of the Court to do so, and this is not an ultra vires act of looking into any fact-finding, but it's the review of the relevance and sufficiency of evidence, be it for Article 5, Article 6, Article 7, and so on. So in this regard, we must underline that this type of argument that the evidence cannot be reviewed has also been used by the Court of Cassation, who initiated a criminal complaint about nine judges of the Turkish Constitutional Court, precisely on this point, that they were looking at the relevance and sufficiency of the evidence, and this was made a basis of a criminal complaint by the Court of Cassation against the Constitutional Court of a country, which speaks to our earlier submissions on the effectiveness of these remedies. Now, a second point that came up was on the principle of subsidiarity, a very important principle of the European Court of Human Rights, which is also obviously in the preamble of this Convention. Now, there are a lot of very important pronouncements on what the principle of subsidiarity is. I'm usually very much impressed by paragraph 189 in Savran v. Denmark, the decision of the Grand Chamber, which I think very clearly explains the meaning and application of proportionality, where in this paragraph, of course, this Court says that this requires an independent and impartial court to have carefully examined the facts, applying the relevant human rights standards consistently with the Convention, and adequately weighed up the applicant's personal interest against the more general public interest in a case. So these are the qualifiers which were established in very clear, crystal terms about what it means when we value, cherish, and respect subsidiarity. Similarly, in Z.K. v. Turkey, this Court has underlined that there are three very important considerations about the applicability of the principle of subsidiarity in relation to Article 35 of the Convention. So the first test this Court has established is whether the Constitutional Court's decisions have a binding nature. We have argued that in this case, this is not the case — it's highly suspect. On three occasions, the binding nature of the Constitutional Court judgments in relation to Gezi Park protests were denied by lower instance courts and on two occasions by the Court of Cassation. Test number two is whether the individual claiming to be a victim is testing the limits of the protection provided by the remedy before the Constitutional Court. So Mr Kavala has lodged four complaints before the Turkish Constitutional Court. Two of them were unsuccessful and two of them have still not yet been decided, and he's unlawfully incarcerated now for eight years and five months. And number three, the final test is that this Court reserves the right to examine the consistency of the Constitutional Court's case law with its own and its assessment under Article 35. Now, the Constitutional Court did not provide a remedy in the first judgment. In the second judgment, it had the opportunity to review and take into account the findings of the European Court of 2019, and it did not do so. In the judgment that came out as an eight to seven, the majority of the judges did not take into account the case law of this Court, and this was acutely underlined by the dissenting judges, which during the infringement proceedings the Grand Chamber also underlined in a very systematic fashion. Now, just two additional points that I'd like to raise. One of them is the characterisation or the description of the facts and the contestation around what the facts are. Was this a protest? Was it an insurrection? Now, we have used official reports by the Turkish Human Rights Institution, which is an intergovernmental human rights institution, which we have annexed to our submissions as to the establishment of facts. So, we are relying on the report of the governmental human rights body in relation to the Gezi Park events. In addition, we have also made use of the report of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, who has conducted country visits and reported on them. So, in our submissions, we are guided by these two fact-finding reports that were established by a governmental body and the Council of Europe High Commissioner. The second relation in relation to the facts is there was a lot of mention of material and financial support in relation to the criminalisation of Mr Kavala. And with the domestic lawyers who have been following this trial for the past eight years, we've gone through this information once again. And here, what is also mentioned in the Court of Cassation judgment as material and financial support are 20 sandwiches, 20 COVID face masks — I shall correct, not gas masks — these are face masks that we all have worn, and the number of these is 20, and they were bought from a pharmacy. 20 poğaça, these are cheese pastries, they're very nice. One foldable plastic table and one loudspeaker that went into the park when people were protesting in the park. I must underline that Osman Kavala's office is at this park. This is his workplace, and when these protests, environmental protests to stop the building of a shopping centre in the only park in that square started, this is what he has said that he could do. And the amount — the inflation in Turkey is very high, so I will get this wrong — at that time it was 670 lira. We think this is, and I may be wrong, I apologise for that, this could be about 300 euros or less. This is the material that is in the Court of Cassation judgment and was repeated here that was provided by Mr Kavala. In relation to money transfers to his not-for-profit organisation Anadolu Kültür, and this is also constantly repeated in the Court of Cassation judgment as you may have seen, this organisation has been vetted regularly and continuously, also very recently during these whole proceedings, and had a clear report from the Ministry of Trade that there was no irregularity in its finances, in its books and papers. And we have also submitted that to you as an annex of the most recent vetting of this, which has happened prior to the Court of Cassation's judgment. So this knowledge was publicly available of the vetting of that information. Now finally, there are these recordings, the tapes that he was speaking to people on the phone organising activities. It is incredibly crucial that Mr Kavala never had a chance to listen to these recordings. He was not able to evaluate the evidentiary value of any of these conversations that he had, and in effect we are talking about his conversations with ten people in total within a space of a few weeks. And this was requested throughout the whole trial, that he'd like to listen to what was recorded, and he wanted to challenge whether the meaning of these terms — because meanings are attributed — he said this and he said that. And throughout this trial he was not given an opportunity to actually challenge and question and examine these recordings that are now in front of you as transcripts after transcripts. None of this has been reviewed under the equality of arms principle throughout the trial. And I think this is another additional factor of the serious breach of Article 6 in this case. And of course, there has been a long discussion in the domestic courts that these were unlawfully acquired wiretappings, and this issue also has been raised and has not been answered in the Court of Cassation judgments. We do not have any information about the three judges who released and acquitted Mr Kavala. The reports and the disciplinary investigations of the High Council of Judges and Prosecutors are private, and we were not provided that information. So we will not be able to comment on what happened to those judges, how they were investigated, what they were accused of in disciplinary conduct. None of this information is something we can verify, we can read or we are able to comment on. We are not able to have access to that information. Thank you. Well, we have now come to the end of the public hearing. I thank once again the parties for their submissions, for their answers to the Court's questions. And the Court will now deliberate on the admissibility and the merits of the case. The judgment will be delivered at a later stage, and the parties will be informed of the date of the delivery. And having said that, I declare the public hearing closed.25 Mart 2026 tarihli "Kavala v. Türkiye" AİHM Büyük Daire duruşmasının tam metni
OPENING OF THE HEARING
PROCEDURAL BACKGROUND
REPRESENTATION OF THE PARTIES
SUBMISSIONS OF THE GOVERNMENT
Abdullah Aydın, Head of the Human Rights Department of the Ministry of Justice of the Republic of Türkiye
SUBMISSIONS OF THE GOVERNMENT
Dr. Ali Emrah Bozbayındır, Dean of Boğaziçi University Faculty of Law
SUBMISSIONS OF THE APPLICANT
Professor Philip Leach, Legal representative for Osman Kavala
SUBMISSIONS OF THE APPLICANT
Professor Başak Çalı, Legal Representative for Osman Kavala
SUBMISSIONS OF THE COMMISSIONER FOR HUMAN RIGHTS
Michael O’Flaherty, Commissioner for Human Rights of the Council of Europe
QUESTIONS FROM THE COURT
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Judge Bårdsen, Vice-President of the Court
Judge Yüksel
Judge Kučs
Judge Chanturia
Judge Mercer
INTERMISSION
REPLIES OF THE PARTIES
Reply by Government, Dr. Ali Emrah Bozbayındır, Dean of Boğaziçi University Faculty of Law
Professor Philip Leach, Legal Representative for Osman Kavala
Professor Başak Çalı, Legal Representative for Osman Kavala
CLOSING OF THE HEARING
