Merab Turava: Losing All Support by Former German Colleagues

Merab Turava wants people to believe that he is still in good academic standing abroad, and that the only reason he was asked to resign from the KriPoz journal (in October) is that he was appointed as Deputy Minister of Justice (in April). This is untrue.

Hundreds of people reacted to this and other posts, that highlighted Turava's removal from the board of the KriPoz.

In fact, German academics have distanced themselves from Merab Turava already more than a year ago, when he was still President of the Constitutional Court. The evidence for this is publicly available – it is the Festschrift for Merab Turava, an issue of the German-Georgian Criminal Reich Journal, that was published in December last year.

Several German professors were asked to contribute and declined. These include long-term friends and colleagues, such as Professor Martin Heger of the Humboldt University of Berlin, Professor Bernd Heinrich of University of Tuebingen, Professor Eduard Schramm of the University in Jena and Professor Bernd Hecker of Tuebingen. These professors, who otherwise regularly worked with Merab Turava, in some cases for many years, refused what in German academia is seen as an elementary courtesy among colleagues.

The Special Edition for Prof. Dr. Merab Turava turns out to be a fairly lonely affair. Practically no senior German colleague and friend came to the academic equivalent of a birthday celebration.

One retired German professor did contribute an article, as a kind of consolation prize. Yet Professor Heiner Alwart, too, includes a clear warning. He expresses his wish that Turava that “he will be able to keep at bay any attempts at politically unlawful influence on impartial legal practice.”

As it turns out, Turava of course was not only not capable of keeping that influence at a distance – but rather decided to go fully into this "political lawlessness" , by switching straight from the Constitutional Court to an executive position in the awful Ministry of Justice in April 2024. By international standards, this is considered to be exceptionally poor form, for a senior judge. It is even worse with all the terrible undertakings by the current Ministry of Justice, which consistently find international condemnation.

There is more evidence that Turava and his friends are being distanced from international scholarship. This includes, among many other aspects, that the Deutsch-Georgische Criminal Law Journal is no longer supported by the German partners that it was funded by, the IRZ fund for legal cooperation from Bonn, Germany.

Even more evidence? The German-Georgian journal has essentially stopped publishing since December 2024 , when before it typically published three issues a year. They no longer can get serious scholars to contribute. Turava is on the board of the journal.

As defunct as German collaboration with regime lawyers: the Deutsch Georgische Strafreichtszeitschrift

Back to the KriPoz issue. In multiple Facebook comments, Merab Turava claims that his departure from the journal was merely technical. If this is the case, as an incisive Facebook comment demanded, he should supply the comprehensive evidence.

The big picture is clear for all to see. German scholars across the board are seeking to distance themselves from Merab Turava and other lawyers of the Georgian Dream regime. Not all of them are doing it explicitly, but after previously having many friends across German institutions, he now is a very lonely man.