Tuğrul Türkeş, a nationalist-leaning lawmaker from the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP), paid a visit businessman and philanthropist Osman Kavala and four other defendants in the Gezi Park trial who are behind bars in İstanbul.
Türkeş announced on X on Wednesday that he visited Kavala, Tayfun Kahraman and Can Atalay in Marmara Prison, previously known as Silivri Prison, where most political prisoners are jailed in Turkey. He said he also visited other Gezi defendants Çiğdem Mater and Mine Özerden at the Bakırköy Women’s Prison in İstanbul.
Türkeş did not give any details about his exchanges with the Gezi Park defendants on X while offering his thanks to the justice minister and his deputy for making the prison visits possible.
When his petition was kept on hold for a while, Türkeş had accused the justice ministry of ignoring his request to visit the Gezi Park defendants.
In an interview with the 12punto news website later, the politician said the Gezi Park defendants were all doing well and are closely following the developments concerning their trial.
He said each Gezi Park defendant is a different person with a different world view and that this shows how wrong it is to portray them as members of the same crime group.
“None of us had the same political view, this was the best thing [about the visits],” said Türkeş, while stressing the importance of people with different views coming together and exchanging views.
“I’m glad I made these visits,” he added.
It was in mid-July when the politician first revealed his intention to visit the Gezi Park defendants in prison, leading to surprise given the fact that his party and its leader and president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, accuses them of staging a coup against his government.
The Gezi Park trial defendants were convicted of attempting to overthrow the Turkish government for their alleged role in anti-government protests in the summer of 2013, which began over an urban development plan in central İstanbul and spread to other cities in Turkey.
Kavala, 66, who faced charges that have ranged from espionage and financing the Gezi Park protests to taking part in a failed coup against Erdoğan in 2016, has been behind bars since November 2017.
Türkeş, an economist and head of the Turkish delegation to the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, has been one of the few pro-government figures who criticize the ongoing imprisonment of Kavala despite a European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) ruling, calling on the judiciary to act in line with the law.
He said he wants to visit Kavala and other Gezi Park defendants as a member of the PACE.
According to Türkeş, the “unlawfulness” associated with the Kavala case is one of the main causes of the economic crisis in Turkey, which has been suffering from a high cost of living and depreciation of the lira for several years.
Tuğrul Türkeş is the eldest son of Alparslan Türkeş, the founder of Erdoğan’s far-right ally, the Nationalist Movement Party (MHP). A member of parliament since 2007, Türkeş joined the AKP after his expulsion from the MHP in 2015.