The Turkish president has been irritated by the support of Western diplomats at the Osman Kavala patron, in pre-trial detention since 2017.
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Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, threatened, Thursday, October 21, to expel the ambassadors of ten countries, including the United States, France and Germany, after the call they had launched a few Days earlier in favor of the liberation of the patron and businessman Osman Kavala, in pre-trial detention since 2017 at the high security imprisonment of Silivri, on the outskirts of Istanbul.
Customary executive statements, Mr. Erdogan dropped down on the plane brought him back from a tour in Africa. “I told our Foreign Minister that we could no longer allow us the luxury of welcoming them to our country,” he said to the journalists who accompanied him. “Do you have to give a lesson to Turkey? For whom you take?”, Has it tempered, rejecting the suggestion that the Turkic judiciary was not independent. “Our judicial system offers one of the most beautiful examples of independence,” he hammered.
In questioned Thursday by journalists on a possible expulsion of the ambassadors, the spokesman for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Tanju Bilgiç, said Ankara had the freedom to decide on the measures he agreed to take, “the moment Venu “, without giving more details.
” Persistent delay “
In a statement published Monday, Canada, France, Finland, Denmark, Germany, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Sweden and the United States claimed a “regulation Just and fast the business “Osman Kavala, imprisoned for four years without judgment. In particular, the diplomats observed that “the persistent delay [taken by] his trial (…) throws a shadow on the respect of democracy, the rule of law and the transparency of the Turkish judicial system”. The next day, the ambassadors of the countries in question were summoned to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Ankara, who found their declaration “irresponsible”.
Respected figure of civil society, Osman Kavala, 64, has been accused since 2013 by President Erdogan’s regime for seeking to overthrow the government. Known for its moderation, this intellectual has devoted most of its fortune to finance charities, bearing at the bedside of ill-treated childhood, the architectural heritage, calling tirelessly to the dialogue between the religious and ethnic minorities of Turkey.
The “George Soros de Turkey”, as Mr. Erdogan appears, was one of the initiators of the Armenian Genocide Recognition Campaign of the Ottoman Empire in 1915, a taboo subject in Turkey. Imprisoned since the end of 2017 without ever being sentenced, Mr. Kavala was acquitted in 2020, then immediately discussed. He is accused of orchestrated and financed the anti-Erdogan demonstrations of 2013 and took part in the attempted coup attempt on July 15, 2016.
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