Striking statements from Osman Kavala, who met with lawyer Afşin Hatipoğlu: The regime does not implement the laws it wrote itself. How can the public trust the regime?

Attempting to overthrow the constitutional order is a shocking accusation! But who would want to overthrow a state, and why?

I imagined the person in the meeting room as a Greek Senator with his curly white hair blended with his beard, his colorful eyes looking out from their small sockets with a smile, and his shimmering chiton fastened with a brooch on his left shoulder; if you had called him a 'friend of Aristotle,' I would have believed you. Osman Kavala, a member of a family that moved its existence to Istanbul following the Turkish withdrawal from Rumelia, generously radiated the aura of his roots.

With his wealthy family, first-class education, and social circle, Kavala was destined to live like a billionaire oligarch without ever touching any of us.

However, he entered business life by taking on the title of merchant after his father's death.

Although he says, "We reached the peak when we bought the Sheraton Ankara Hotel," when I reminded him of Turkcell, he corrected the bar of success by saying, "Yes, that was the real peak." His relationship with İletişim Publishing emerges as a fundamental moment where the struggle of capital and the struggle of ideas confronted each other.

While explaining his entry into the publishing world, a name he pointed to seemed interesting to me: "I was very influenced by Habermas," he said. Was Habermas, who came to the fore with the concept of the "public sphere," also to be considered the cause of the accusations that Kavala threatened the public sphere in later years? We cannot know this, but what we do know is that Kavala defined himself as a socialist in his youth and as a leftist in the present time. But then, why does Besim Tibuk, who brought the Liberal Democratic Party to our country, speak of him with praise and constantly keep his name on the agenda?

"Besim and I were together in the Tourism Investors Association; thank God, he was the businessman who remembered me the most," he says, adding, "Even though I am a leftist, I have a liberal perspective like Besim in terms of economics."

The father-in-law of such a leftist was Tarık Buğra, one of the iconic figures of Turkish Nationalists. Kavala says, "Tarık Bey was a very good writer, an important figure who looked critically at his own neighborhood and thought in a human-centered way."

Life is exciting with its ironies. I, who fed my nationalist vein by reading the books Osmancık, Küçük Ağa, and Firavun İmanı, am interviewing Tarık Bey's son-in-law in prison, who is accused of "attempting to overthrow the constitutional order."

Before touching upon the mainstream debates surrounding Osman Kavala, I would like to open a parenthesis that I am trying to understand with an objective eye.

When you look at Kavala's resume, you see an NGO corresponding to every line. TEMA, the History Foundation, the Association for Civil Rights, the Open Society Foundation, Anadolu Kültür, and many others.

It is surprising for a merchant doing business worldwide to do almost full-time civil society work. Osman Kavala has dominated this field for years, which the elite rich in our country stay away from, except for their family foundations and a few token NGOs where they drink wine.

Osman Bey explains this as follows: "I worked personally during the '99 earthquake. That earthquake is the breaking point in my life. After the earthquake, I turned more to civil society than business life. My most important move was not the Open Society Foundation, but the Anadolu Kültür movement. We opened art centers in Diyarbakır and Kars and carried out many social projects. The Open Society Foundation was a business that proceeded under the chairmanship of Can Paker, and I was just one of the board members there. As for the Soros issue, it is a tabloidized event. I have no closeness to Soros whatsoever."

What I mean is that Kavala was closely involved with many social events even before the Gezi protests. In fact, an anecdote he mentioned was noteworthy.

In 2005, they met with the then-Prime Minister Erdoğan with a group of intellectuals for the resolution of the Kurdish Issue. During the meeting, he reminded Erdoğan of Cahit Sıtkı Tarancı's poem "Memleketim" (My Homeland). During his trip to Diyarbakır, which he took after this meeting, Erdoğan read Cahit Sıtkı's "Memleketim" poem. It has been frequently discussed recently that Bahçeli sent a poem by Cahit Sıtkı to Öcalan. Perhaps Bahçeli also preferred the "Memleketim" poem.

The legal profession shows us that cases should flow in their own course, away from public opinion, but that they cannot escape perceptions. The book "Bir Dava Hikâyesi, Osman Kavala’nın Yedi Yılı" (A Case Story, Osman Kavala's Seven Years), written to explain how Osman Kavala "got involved" in Gezi, is like a symbol of this thesis.

Let me include here one of the perhaps simple but, in my opinion, critical parts of the file. The distance between Gezi Park and Osman Kavala's office is 100 meters. In other words, Kavala did not just appear out of thin air in Gezi Park. He was already working in that area. The Gezi events took place right in front of his door. So much so that Kavala drew the distance between Gezi Park and his office on a piece of paper he took in his hand and showed me. Until that moment, I did not know that Kavala's daily life before the events also took place in that region.

The Gezi File, with the ECHR's multiple violation rulings, its role as a legal argument in political debates, and its freshness on the government's list of bogeymen, never falls off Turkey's agenda.

So much so that even journalist İsmail Saymaz was placed under house arrest last spring due to Gezi.

The matter of manager Ayşe Barım is an event in itself.

In this context, I will also publish the prison conversation I had with Can Atalay and Tayfun Kahraman in the coming days. As I closed the parenthesis, Kavala added this note: "Until the Gezi verdict was reached, they kept me in prison by associating me with the PKK due to a few frames from Şerafettin Elçi's funeral."

When the names of Murat Belge, Avni Özgürel, and Mithat Sancar came up several times during the conversation, I asked, "Were you also a 'Yes, but not enough' supporter?"

"I did not vote in the 2010 Referendum, but we established the 'Contact and Dialogue' group with many of the friends mentioned. We worked actively for the resolution of the Kurdish Issue," he said.

I am presenting to you directly his thoughts on the "Terror-Free Turkey" project we are discussing today, which include statements that surprised me.

"The rule of law does not prevail in Turkey. The regime does not implement the legal articles it wrote itself. The government, which does not implement the violation rulings issued both regarding me and in other files, has now sent İmamoğlu and his friends here as if that were not enough. Now, how can the public trust this regime and support this process?

The PKK had already seen that it could not continue the armed struggle. This process cannot be followed without considering regional balances. They think that the PYD is fed by Turkey. I chatted in prison with a convict who came from that region. He says, 'Two-thirds of the PYD are Syrian Kurds.'

We do not accept that there is a separate Kurdistan in Syria, but it exists. There is the issue of Lebanonization, for example. Turkey will not become Lebanon; our history is different. Also, there are those who cite Northern Iraq's autonomy as an example. Barzani's Kurdistan is far beyond the definition of autonomy; there is no such autonomy practice in the world. You cannot solve these problems by writing 'Kurdish' into the constitution. I do not support this either. Cultural rights are of course indisputable, but there was no need to establish a commission for the topics being discussed. The government could have passed certain laws through parliament. The government could turn the CHP's unconditional support regarding the commission into an opportunity. Independent of this topic, I should also state that I told the CHP management, 'Have them call for a two-state solution regarding Gaza through the Socialist International.' The French did it even before the CHP."

Osman Kavala is an extremely well-equipped and polite person.

After the interview, he sent a few notes through his lawyers so there would be no misunderstandings.

He asked for my address to send a book we talked about. He also entrusted many sentences to me on the condition that I would not write them.

While these lines were in my hands, the German government awarded Osman Kavala the "Goethe Medal." If you keep an international name inside with a file that you cannot convince universal institutions of, countries prefer to pick at this wound of yours at every opportunity.

I do not know if Kavala will be released. This decision, of course, concerns the law. However, does Turkey need Kavala's imprisonment, or are we protecting our constitution through his captivity? I cannot help but ask these questions.

The political institution, which claims to be trying to normalize the country, is trying to increase confidence in the economy and the regime with the phrase "We are a state of law." However, certain topics like the Kavala File appear before the country at every step. The ECHR's violation rulings become the main subject of all political debates. The "Terror-Free Turkey" project, which is undertaken without solving such problematic areas, does not find a response in the public. Forgetting that politics and justice are a whole, moves made without being filled in are crushed under the weight of ongoing legal files.

I would like to conclude the article with one last question. From the perspective of the "Terror-Free Turkey" project, for which the People's Alliance is struggling to find hope, does an environment where Osman Kavala is imprisoned or an environment where he is free serve the government's policies better?

Atty. Afşin HATİPOĞLU