Emin Avundukluoglu
28 July 2020•Update: 28 July 2020
ANKARA
Turkey's main opposition leader on Tuesday criticized businessman Osman Kavala's arrest, saying that the case is "a matter of revenge".
"If you are fabricating another crime from the same [court] file, you are revenging him. This is not a matter of justice but a matter of revenge," Kemal Kilicdaroglu told his party's parliamentary group.
Kilicdaroglu claimed that Kavala's case was parallel to the case of Selahattin Demirtas, the former co-chair of Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP).
"He is also always acquitted, and always arrested of a new [court] file. They think that they will ask for mercy. Why? They are not guilty," he said.
In September, Demirtas was sentenced to four years and eight months in prison after he was convicted of spreading terrorist propaganda, terrorist organization leadership, and public incitement to hatred and hostility.
Turkey's newly formed Democracy and Progress Party's lawmaker Mustafa Yeneroglu also criticized Kavala's arrest "for 1,000 days".
Speaking to the reporters in the parliament, Yeneroglu said Kavala's arrest cannot be explained with justice.
"The thing that is more worrying is that he was re-arrested of another fictionalized and empty file," he added.
Kavala was first arrested over criminal charges related to the 2013 Gezi protests, a small number of demonstrations in Istanbul that later transformed into a nationwide wave of protests against the government which left eight protestors and a police officer dead.
The businessman was later remanded into custody by an Istanbul court as part of a probe into the 2016 defeated coup with prosecutors accusing him of spying.
Fetullah Terrorist Organization (FETO) and its US-based leader Fetullah Gulen orchestrated the defeated coup of July 15, 2016 which left 251 people martyred and nearly 2,200 injured.
Turkey accuses FETO of a long-running campaign to overthrow the state through the infiltration of Turkish institutions, particularly the military, police, and judiciary.
