Turkey's opposition to Erdogan supports Osman Kavala
Turkey's opposition leader Kemal Kilicdaroglu of the Republican People's Party (CHP) is leading a solidarity movement for activist Osman Kavala, jailed this week for motivating the 2013 Gezi Park protests.
Kemal Kilicdaroglu has been joined by a large section of Turkish society in repudiation of the Erdogan government's repression. Kavala has been sentenced to life imprisonment on charges of organising and financing a coup. Along with him, seven others sentenced to 18 years will serve their sentences in Turkish prisons. Embassies and international organisations have taken a stand against the sentencing of Osman and his colleagues because of the lack of trial guarantees.
The Turkish opposition has pledged to overturn the conviction of Kavala and his colleagues and "restore the rule of law" if it wins the next national elections scheduled for 2023. "We will fight against those who subject the judiciary to the orders of politicians and hold our people hostage in prisons," Kilicdaroglu added in a statement reported by Al-Arab.
Although still without reliable polls, the Republican People's Party is emerging as Erdogan's main opponent in the 2023 elections, and its leader could become Turkey's next president. The CHP's political leanings are slightly more left-leaning than the current ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP). Especially when it comes to social issues such as secularism or rapprochement with Europe. They have 135 seats in the Grand National Assembly.
The CHP's initiative has been joined by the Lyi Parti (Good Party), one of the parties closest to pro-European tendencies. All opposition parties together have 240 seats spread across 11 different parties, compared to 286 seats for the AKP, which governs with the support of far-right groups.
The Turkish opposition agrees on the lack of independence and the government's instrumentalisation of the judiciary. They particularly highlight the authoritarian turn of the Erdogan government since 2013, and the accentuation of this trend since 2016, following the military coup against Erdogan.
Erdogan's instrumentalisation of the judiciary had already been denounced by Turkish journalists in exile in the specialised portal Nordic Monitor. In January 2022, Turkish journalist Levent Kenez published information about how the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) is always opposed by Turkish judge Saadet Yüksel.
Yüksel, who sits on the European bench, has been known for always opposing the admission of complaints with political undertones and links to Turkish president Erdogan, conclusions that the French daily Le Monde also reached after a journalistic investigation into the judge.