Turkey Re-Arrests Activist Kavala After Shock Acquittal

After his unexpected acquittal, the Istanbul chief prosecutor has ordered civil society leader Osman Kavala back into detention on charges related to his alleged involvement in a failed coup attempt in 2016.

Kavala and the eight other defendants in the so-called "Gezi Park" trial were acquitted on Tuesday in a surprise verdict.

The Turkish opposition, international human rights groups and the EU all welcomed the verdict as a hoped-for sign of a return to a more normal situation in turbulent Turkey.

Kavala's supporters expected his immediate release from the maximum-security Silivri prison on the outskirts of Istanbul in which he has been held for more than two years alongside other political prisoners.

But the mood of optimism lasted only a few hours, before the Istanbul chief prosecutor's move, announced late on February 18. The prosecutor said in a press release that his office would bring this acquittal verdict and others before the Court of Appeal.

"The new decision on Kavala's arrest resembles deliberate and planned oppression by the judiciary," Amnesty International's Turkey Office wrote.

The Gezi Park protests began in 2013 with a few hundred people trying to protect one of the few green areas left in Istanbul from a plan to build a shopping mall.

But they grew into a nationwide challenge to President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and were met by a police crackdown in which nine people died.

Erdogan himself claimed the protests were organised with the help of foreign powers and US billionaire philanthropist George Soros, the founder of the Open Society Foundations. Kavala's acquittal had angered him - and his supporters welcomed the latest decision to re-arrest him.

"Gezi was not an innocent uprising. There were...