Critics, including a European Parliament member and opposition politicians, have denounced an İstanbul court’s 12-year, six-month sentence for celebrity manager Ayşe Barım over the 2013 Gezi Park protests, calling it political, Turkish Minute reported.
The İstanbul 26th High Criminal Court sentenced Barım on Wednesday for “aiding an attempt to overthrow the government.”
Nacho Sánchez Amor, a Spanish member of the European Parliament who tracks Turkey’s rights record, wrote on X that he stood in “full solidarity” with Barım and described the ruling as “outrageous,” adding that she was “another victim of the prosecutor who today became Minister of Justice,” a reference to Akın Gürlek, who took over the position of justice minister today from his predecessor, Yılmaz Tunç.
Sezgin Tanrıkulu, a lawmaker from the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), said on X that sentencing Barım 13 years after the Gezi protests “fits neither law, nor justice, nor conscience,” arguing that the case demonstrated the judiciary acting in line with the “current political needs” of the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP).
Tanrıkulu described Gezi as a mass social movement in which millions exercised their constitutional right to protest peacefully and said harsh sentences built on interpretation rather than “concrete, certain” evidence violated basic principles of criminal procedure.
Another CHP lawmaker, İsmet Güneşhan, said on X that while outgoing and incoming justice ministers praised Turkey as a “state of law,” Barım received a 12-and-a-half-year sentence for a crime he said did not exist. He also linked the ruling to other cases involving opposition figures, including Şişli district Mayor Resul Emrah Şahan, who he said was not released.
Other critical posts circulated online as the verdict spread. Hüseyin Aygün, a lawyer and a former lawmaker from CHP, wrote that Gürlek, who had been repeatedly complained about to the Council of Judges and Prosecutors, had overseen the arrest of a wide range of government critics including Barım.
Journalist Şebnem Arsu wrote that the timing of the decision was tied to an intimidation campaign against President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s opponents.
Deutsche Welle correspondent Julia Hahn posted a short summary of the ruling, saying Barım was sentenced for encouraging artists to join Gezi protests, allegations she denies.
Barım, 55, is a prominent talent manager and the founder of ID Communications, which represents actors and other public figures. Prosecutors accused her of steering artists’ participation in the Gezi protests, which began as a sit-in against redevelopment of a small park in central İstanbul and spread nationwide after a police crackdown, becoming a broader challenge to Erdoğan’s government, then led by him as prime minister.
Turkey has pursued a series of prosecutions portraying Gezi as an organized attempt to topple the government, a narrative rejected by many protest participants and rights groups. The most prominent Gezi defendant, businessman and civil society figure Osman Kavala, is serving an aggravated life sentence despite a European Court of Human Rights ruling calling for his release, an issue that has fueled long-running tensions between Ankara and the Council of Europe.
