A Turkish court, which was expected to reach a verdict in a hearing beginning Friday in the long-running case against jailed businessperson Osman Kavala and 15 others that has strained Ankara's ties with Western allies, postponed the trial to Monday.
In the last hearing last month, the court ordered to keep Kavala in prison while it was widely expected to reach a verdict. But defense lawyers had requested more time to respond to the prosecutor's final opinion on the case and the judge set a date of April 22 for what was likely to be the final hearing.
Kavala was detained on Oct. 18, 2017, and faced charges over the 2013 Gezi Park protests, a small number of demonstrations in Istanbul that later transformed into nationwide riots. He was acquitted of all charges in February 2020, but an appeals court overturned this verdict later.
He was also accused of involvement in the 2016 defeated coup orchestrated by the Gülenist Terror Group (FETÖ) in Turkey and was remanded in custody on charges of spying.
Prosecutor Edip Şahiner has requested that Kavala and architect Mücella Yapıcı be convicted of attempting to overthrow the government through violence, which would carry a sentence of up to life in prison without parole.
He said that six others should be sentenced for aiding them, while asking that the case against the eight other defendants be separated after not attending the hearings while abroad.
Kavala and another defendant, whose case the prosecutor also said should be separated, are also accused of involvement in the coup attempt in 2016.
Yapıcı has been acquitted twice of charges related to the Gezi protests. All defendants deny the charges, saying the Gezi protests were protected by constitutional rights.
The European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) called for Kavala's release in late 2019 and ruled his detention serves to silence him.
But Turkish courts have not freed Kavala and Ankara now faces being suspended from the Council of Europe, a human rights watchdog, after "infringement proceedings" were launched due to his continued detention, which Ankara denounced as interference.
President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan subsequently said when asked about the decision that Turkey will not respect the Council of Europe if it does not respect Turkish courts.
Turkey urged the Council of Europe not to interfere in the country's independent judiciary and to be impartial toward the country in response to the decision regarding the Kavala case.
Embassies of Ankara's Western allies, including the United States and Germany, also echoed the ECtHR call for Kavala's release last year.
Ankara nearly expelled 10 Western countries' envoys, including the United States and major European powers, after they made an appeal for Kavala's release last October.
The Foreign Ministry summoned the ambassadors of these countries, accusing them of meddling in the Turkish judiciary, while President Erdoğan announced he had instructed Foreign Minister Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu to declare the 10 ambassadors as persona non grata. However, the embassies took a step back, preventing the crisis from escalating further.
The diplomatic spat was resolved after the U.S. and several of the other countries issued statements saying they respected the United Nations convention requiring diplomats to not interfere in the host country's domestic affairs.
Kavala denies the claims and has branded the charges in the indictment as "politically motivated."
Kavala's acquittal along with eight others in the Gezi trial was overturned last year and the case was combined with the other charges against him.
