PRESS RELEASE - ASPS URGES COUNCIL OF EUROPE TO SECURE THE RELEASE OF OSMAN KAVALA (09.12.2025)

Strasbourg, 09.12.2025 : Council of Europe Governments must sanction Turkey for its refusal to respect the rulings of the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) in the case of Osman Kavala, the Association of Schools of Political Studies of the Council of Europe (ASPS) said today on the eve of a rare ministerial meeting on Human Rights taking place in Strasbourg on International Human Rights Day.

Failure to act makes a mockery of the democratic principles which Heads of State and Government proclaimed at their 2023 Summit in Reykjavik, the ASPS said.

Kavala, a philanthropist, human rights defender and founder of the European School of Political Studies of the Council of Europe in Turkey has been in jail since 2017 and was given an aggravated life sentence by a Turkish court in 2022 in a total travesty of justice.

In infringement proceedings initiated by the Council of Europe’s Committee of Ministers, the ECtHR found that Turkey had failed to fulfil its obligations and had not acted in “good faith”.

The Turkish Authorities must release Osman Kavala and other political prisoners immediately or else face the too long delayed action which the Committee of Ministers must now take if it is to retain any credibility as the guarantor of Human Rights in Europe” said ASPS President, Jack Hanning.

Neither the Council nor the EU can continue to turn a blind eye to member states where anyone who criticises the authorities runs the risk of being accused of terrorism or seeking to overthrow the government”, Hanning said, deploring that in Turkey “justice” was being used to silence peaceful dissent and political opposition”.

The happy coincidence that the Strasbourg meeting will be taking place on International Human Rights Day should be a wake up call for Ministers from the 46 Council of Europe countries who have a legal and a moral obligation to uphold European values of which the ECtHR is the embodiment and for which the people of Ukraine are fighting on our behalf.

Notes for Editors

The Association of Schools of Political Studies (ASPS) was set up in July 2008 by the Directors of the Schools of Political Studies of the Council of Europe to play an enhanced role in the management of their programme, to strengthen links between the Schools and foster their activities.

The first School was set up in Moscow in 1992. Since then other Schools have been established in Albania, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Bulgaria, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Georgia, Greece, Kosovo, Moldova, North Macedonia, Montenegro, Morocco, Poland, Romania, Serbia, Tunisia, Turkey and Ukraine.

Jack Hanning has been President of the ASPS since 2024. A former Director of External Relations of the Council of Europe he succeeded Nils Muižnieks (2018-2024) and Catherine Lalumière (2008-2018).

In 2024 the ECtHR condemned the Russian Federation which, on 25 December 2020, had classified the ASPS as an "undesirable organisation" under Vladimir Putin's 2015 legislation aimed at silencing dissident voices, NGOs, the media and human rights defenders.

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