A judge was transferred to a remote city in eastern Turkey on Monday following his vote on Turkish businessman Osman Kavala’s release.
Judge Sercan Karagöz voted in favour of releasing Kavala, in compliance with the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) ruling in 2019.
The move comes as part of a larger reshuffling effort that saw the reassignment of 3,423 judges and prosecutors.
Kavala has been behind bars since 2017 over charges of financing terrorism and attempting to overthrow the government. The ECHR has called the charges baseless and politically motivated, and ordered his immediate release.
The continued imprisonment of Kavala and Kurdish politician Selahattin Demirtaş despite several ECHR rulings for their release has triggered infringement proceedings against Turkey at the Council of Europe, which could result in Turkey’s expulsion from the top European body that it helped found.
Judge Ayşe Sarısu Pehlivan, who served in the western province of Izmir, has also been unexpectedly reassigned to the southern province of Adana, despite not making any transfer request.
This decision comes after Pehlivan faced disciplinary action for statements she made during an interview with Evrensel newspaper in 2017. Following her appeal to the ECHR, in June 2023, the ECHR unanimously ruled that Pehlivan’s freedom of expression had been violated.