Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has rectified a risky diplomatic maneuver with serious consequences such as the expulsion, announced in public, of 10 accredited ambassadors in Ankara, including representatives of the United States, France and Germany. They had demanded the release of businessman and activist Osman Kavala, detained for four years, despite a ruling from the European Court of Human Rights ordering his release. The Turkish leader, in power since 2014, has tried to use the threat as a response to international pressure in the face of an unacceptable situation of human rights violations in his country. It is not the first time it has done so, but this time the reckless move threatened relations with Turkey’s main commercial and strategic partners.
Kavala, a philanthropic businessman, involved in initiatives related to coexistence and the defense of minorities, was jailed in 2017 on charges of being behind riots in 2013. Acquitted by a court – although the trial will have to be repeated after an appeal -, he remained in prison after the Prosecutor’s Office, controlled by Erdogan, accused him of being linked to the failed 2016 coup attempt, whose repression has led to the imprisonment, disqualification or dismissal of thousands of people from their jobs. Two years ago the Strasbourg Court – whose resolutions Ankara is obliged to abide by because it belongs to the Council of Europe – ordered his release from prison, without the Turkish regime having acted accordingly. Last week the representatives of 10 countries signed a statement demanding that Turkey comply with the sentence, and that has been the trigger for Erdogan’s abrupt reaction. It only managed to deactivate shortly after, after a diplomatic filigree from Washington, which, through Twitter and on the Kavala case, he referred to the Vienna Convention regarding the obligation of diplomats not to interfere in the internal affairs of States, thus the Turkish president saves his face before his public opinion, but does not reduce the seriousness of his attitude.
Erdogan has made the foreign enemy an essential key to systematically justify the authoritarian drift into which he has entered for years, despite the risks that this tactic entails for his country. Since the Cold War, Turkey has been part of the Western economic and military bloc to which it has vital ties whose weakening has repercussions within and outside its borders. Above this, the issue that has generated the confrontation remains pending: Kavala’s rights continue to be violated and he has to be released, according to the ruling of the European Court of Human Rights.