The European Court of Human Rights ruled on Tuesday that Türkiye’s detention of Mehmet Osman Kavala since 2017 is unlawful in nature, finding that the country has deprived him of his right to free speech, peaceful assembly, fair trial, and liberty.

The majority judges criticized the Turkish domestic courts for not “even attempting to establish” the causal link between the acts of violence during the 2013 Gezi Park demonstrations and Osman Kavala’s civil-society activities, lobbying, and financial support for non-violent organizations. These, as the majority ruled, were lawful exercises of his right to free speech and peaceful assembly under the European Convention on Human Rights. The judgment affirmed that these rights do not cease to exist when a third party acted violently.

The majority also found that the trial against Osman Kavala was unfair. This included the disciplinary proceedings against the judges who first tried and acquitted him. The judges also found that subsequent convictions were based on a weak link between his activities and the violence that followed, and considered the impact of public statements by high-ranking domestic officials incriminating him on domestic courts’ impartiality.

Finally, the majority opinion upheld its previous ruling that Turkish authorities violated Osman Kavala’s right to liberty by detaining him with insufficient evidence.

However, the dissenting judges held that Osman Kavala had not exhausted all domestic remedies, and thus his situation did not warrant the court’s intervention.

Following the ruling, Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch urged for Osman Kavala’s immediate release. Eve Geddie, director of Amnesty’s European Institutions Office, stressed that Türkiye has defied the court’s rulings twice in relation to Kavala’s predicament, calling on the Council of Europe to monitor Türkiye’s compliance with its obligations.

The court has consistently observed that it has no jurisdiction to supervise a state party complying with its ruling. That power belongs to the Committee of Ministers, the decisive body of the Council of Europe, under Article 46 of the convention.

Osman Kavala established several non-governmental organizations in the countries that advocate for human rights, environmental protections, and historical reconciliation, among other civil matters. On October 18, 2017, the Turkish authorities arrested him for his alleged attempts to overthrow the government with force or violence and the constitutional order during the 2013 Gezi Park demonstrations. They were a series of protests from May to September of that year to oppose an urban redevelopment project. Alev Yaman, former human rights activist at PEN International, wrote at the time that the Turkish authorities’ “draconian tactics” to disperse peaceful protests had triggered the nationwide response.