An İstanbul court on Wednesday evening ordered to arrest Osman Kavala, a businessman and rights activist, over his alleged role in a 2016 coup attempt, the Turkish media reported.
The İstanbul Chief Public Prosecutor’s Office on Tuesday evening issued a detention warrant for Kavala, hours after he was acquitted by a court along with eight other defendants in a trial related to the anti-government Gezi Park protests of 2013.
Kavala has been kept in pretrial detention for more than 800 days.
Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has called Kavala an agent of US financier George Soros, whose efforts to promote democracy around the world have made him a target for several authoritarian leaders.
The pro-government media on Tuesday bashed the İstanbul court’s decision to acquit the Gezi trial defendants.
