His speech has become rarer in the international media and, if his voice seems hesitant at times, the words – pronounced in impeccable English – are precise and tell the ordeal that Ayse Bugra has been going through for almost four and a half years.

Her husband Osman Kavala, a philanthropist and entrepreneur nicknamed the "red billionaire", is due to appear on Friday April 22 in a court in Istanbul.

Accused of having "sought to destabilize Turkey" during the failed coup of 2016, he has been detained since October 2017 and faces life imprisonment.

Why is her husband thus targeted by Turkish justice?

“There are several hypotheses, she explains with a polite smile. One of them is that it serves to intimidate civil society activists and human rights defenders in the country. therefore responds to a hidden political purpose, which corresponds to the reasons which motivated the decision taken by the European Court of Human Rights, which declared [in December 2019, Ed] that the detention of my husband constituted a violation of several articles of the European Convention on Human Rights.

After having repeatedly called on Turkey – one of its founding members – to release Osman Kavala, the Council of Europe launched infringement proceedings against Ankara in February.

"There are other theories, continues Ayse Bugra, about the influence of certain political groups, certain individuals who would be in favor of damaging or breaking Turkey's ties with Western democracies. But frankly , I don't know."

She points out: "My husband is not affiliated with any political party, organization or movement, so it is quite strange."

The one whom the Turkish president has raised to the rank of public enemy number one of the Turkish nation, the one he calls "Soros' agent in Turkey", is an ideal target.

He has the advantage of embodying everything that Recep Tayyip Erdogan, speech after speech, claims to be fighting: “Enemies from inside and outside who would collaborate together”, explains Ayse Bugra in a breath.

"It all has to do with a particular political strategy that adorns itself with polarizing rhetoric to divide the population between 'us' and 'the others', and I think my husband is helpful in that rhetoric."

Absurdity of charges

Accused in turn of espionage or of attempting to overthrow the government, Osman Kavala was acquitted of certain charges, then arrested again in stride for the same.

Different files, different charges have been merged, everything seems to have been done to prevent him from leaving his high security prison in Silivri, west of Istanbul.

This rich heir, born in Paris in 1957 and brought up in the United Kingdom, chose to put his fortune at the service of dialogue between cultures and minorities in Turkey, including the Kurds and the Armenians.

Winner of the European Archaeological Heritage Prize in 2019, he is behind many projects such as the Anadolu Kültür center in Istanbul, where his wife receives us, located a stone's throw from the famous Gezi Park, whose destruction project in 2013 sparked a popular uprising.

"Gezi is right there, said Ayse Bugra pointing to the window, and our building is here, her mother lives here, it's a family building. What happened was extremely interesting, there were young people, people old, poor, rich. Of course he went there and talked to the people who were part of this movement, of course he himself was against turning the park into a shopping center."

Every detail looks good to accuse Osman Kavala.

Among the elements of the accusation was a map of the distribution of bees on Turkish territory, found in the phone of the philanthropist.

The document was presented as proof that he intended to redraw the country's borders.

To demonstrate that he would have organized and financed the movement in Gezi Park, the prosecution noted that he had bought the demonstrators a few tables, a few plastic chairs and pogaça (Turkish brioche buns).

"But the absurdity is in the indictment itself, insists Ayse Bugra, these demonstrations were national, they spread throughout the country and they brought together, according to official figures, 3 and a half million of people. Imagine a single person organizing and funding a national protest movement of this magnitude. That in itself is absurd."

Culture as a shield

When Ayse Bugra talks about the man who has been her husband for nearly 35 years, her voice changes and her gaze hints at the difficulty of separation.

"He has the right to make a 10-minute phone call once a week, I got it this morning by the way. But generally, he talks more to his mother who is of a certain age. And then, I can see him once a week, even though it hasn't been possible during the pandemic. We talk in a handset, separated by a glass panel for an hour."

Author of numerous books, professor of political economy, co-founder of the political science forum of the University of the Bosphorus - the most prestigious in Turkey, and also under the radar of the government -, Ayse Bugra struggles to hide under her courteous manners the extreme weariness which grips him.

"I expect nothing more. After having undergone such a long and painful process, which it is difficult to describe in logical terms, I cannot foresee anything, I expect nothing and I try not to hope for anything above all, hope for nothing because hope that leads to disappointment is devastating."

She seems to be facing a wall: “Hearing after hearing, we have always been confronted with the same conclusions, the same detentions, expressed each time with exactly the same words, whatever the arguments presented by our lawyers. is really hard. In the last hearings, I didn't even want to stay in the courtroom."

However, Ayse Bugra moves every time, out of respect, she says, to friends, journalists, diplomats who also come: "I feel like I have to be there for them, otherwise I wouldn't go" .

How does she cope mentally?

Always this same polite smile: "We do as we can. My husband and I are lucky, because we have literature, fiction."

Scattered on his desk, books in shambles, including one by Thomas Mann, the German author who wrote in "The Magic Mountain" in 1924: "Time is a gift from the gods, lent to man so that he takes advantage, so that he can make a useful use of it, engineer, in the service of the progress of humanity."

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