The Václav Havel Human Rights Prize, given annually by the Council of Europe in honour of action in defence of human rights, has been awarded to imprisoned Turkish human rights defender, philanthropist and activist Osman Kavala. Kavala, a significant patron of the arts in Turkey, has been imprisoned since 2017 following his arrest for his alleged links to the Gezi Park protests.
Writing for ArtReview about The Past is Present, the current exhibition at Depo gallery in Istanbul, Kaya Genç described how ‘In 2022 Erdoğan called Kavala “the red Soros of Turkey”, and accused him of colluding with the philanthropist George Soros, “that Hungarian Jew”, to topple him during 2013’s Occupy Gezi protests. A victim of Erdoğan’s fury, Kavala has now spent more than five years in jail, having received a whole life sentence.’ A former tobacco warehouse, Depo, Genç writes, ‘has served as refuge for critical voices in Istanbul’s cultural landscape since 2008, when it was transformed into its current form by Kavala.’
In a letter written from prison, read out by his wife Ayşe Kavala, who received the award in his name, Kavala dedicated the Prize to his ‘fellow citizens unlawfully kept in prison’. He quoted Václav Havel in a letter to his wife Olga from prison in 1980: ‘The most important thing of all is not to lose hope. This does not mean closing one’s eyes to the horrors of the world. In fact, only those who have not lost faith and hope can see the horrors of the world with genuine clarity.’
The award ceremony took place on 9 October on the opening day of the autumn plenary session of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) in Strasbourg.
