Turkey charges TV star manager over alleged gov’t ‘overthrow’ attempt

Turkish prosecutors have formally charged a well-known manager of television stars with “attempting to overthrow the government,” the state-run Anadolu news agency reported Tuesday, in a case critics say is a move by the Turkish government to use the judiciary to silence opponents.

Ayşe Barım was arrested in January on allegations dating to 2013, when protests erupted over the government’s urbanization plans for Gezi Park in İstanbul, sparking a wave of demonstrations against Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, who was prime minister at the time.

Prosecutors accused her of “pushing” her actors to take part in the anti-government demonstrations, a claim she denies.

“A charge has been filed against Ayşe Barım demanding up to 30 years in prison for helping an attempt to overthrow the government of the Republic of Turkey,” Anadolu cited the prosecutors as saying.

She was also charged over her supposed ties to Osman Kavala, a philanthropist and leading critic of Erdoğan who is serving a life sentence on conviction of attempting to overthrow the government and financing the Gezi Park protests.

Barım, 56, suffers from heart problems and was recently hospitalized, her lawyer says.

Turkish authorities regularly target journalists, lawyers and elected political representatives, especially since a failed 2016 coup against the government.

On Saturday prosecutors said they had issued arrest warrants for 53 people, 47 of whom had been detained, over a corruption investigation into İstanbul’s popular opposition mayor Ekrem İmamoğlu, who was himself arrested last month.

İmamoğlu’s detention sparked huge crowds rallying in nightly protests that quickly spread across the country in what became Turkey’s biggest wave of unrest since 2013.

© Agence France-Presse