Tayfun Kahraman, a former Istanbul city planner convicted in Turkey’s Gezi Park trial, was taken to a hospital Sunday after a worsening of his multiple sclerosis, the Cumhuriyet daily reported.
Kahraman, who has served over 38 months of an 18-year sentence, is incarcerated at the notorious Silivri Prison in Istanbul.
The facility gained notoriety after a coup attempt in 2016, when it became the main holding site for thousands of dissidents.
“For 38 months, he has been separated from his daughter Vera and kept away from his family as a result of a judicial process in which he was denied a fair trial, his evidence and witnesses were excluded from the case file, documents proving his innocence were ignored and all universal principles of law were disregarded,” Özgür Çelik, the Republican People’s Party’s (CHP) Istanbul provincial chair said on X.
Kahraman’s wife, Meriç Demir Kahraman, last year alleged that during a routine medical visit in August 2024, he was held handcuffed in a prison transport vehicle for over six hours under conditions so severe that the cuffs impeded blood flow and caused injuries. She claimed the authorities refused to remove the restraints, even after her husband complained.
Kahraman was among eight officials, intellectuals and activists convicted in April 2022 of aiding an attempt to overthrow the government in connection with the 2013 Gezi Park protests.
The Gezi Park protests, which began over an urban development plan in central İstanbul in the summer of 2013 and spread to other cities in Turkey, posed a serious challenge to the rule of then-prime minister and current president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. They were violently suppressed by the government of Erdoğan, who later labelled the protests as a “coup attempt” against him.
He received an 18-year sentence, upheld on appeal in December 2022 by the Istanbul Regional Court and in September 2023 by Turkey’s Supreme Court of Appeals.
