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Osman Kavala (archive)
Photo: Anadolu Culture Center / AFP
The Turkish Foreign Ministry has summoned the German ambassador.
The Foreign Office in Berlin had previously called in the Turkish ambassador on Friday because of the internationally criticized judgment against the prominent cultural promoter Osman Kavala.
Kavala and seven other defendants were sentenced last Monday in Istanbul in connection with the 2013 Gezi protests critical of the government.
Kavala received a life sentence for attempted coup.
He has been imprisoned in the high security prison Silivri near Istanbul for more than four years.
The businessman was originally arrested in 2017 on charges of financing and organizing the 2013 Gezi protests in Istanbul against President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan's government.
In February 2020, a court acquitted him of this charge.
Kavala was released from prison at the time, but arrested again a few hours later - this time in connection with the attempted coup against Erdoğan in 2016 and on allegations of espionage.
Kavala denies all allegations.
A ministry spokesman said the Turkish ambassador was "made very clear" about the position of the federal government during the talks.
The federal government demands the immediate release of Kavala.
Chancellor Olaf Scholz (SPD) had sharply condemned the verdict against Kavala via a spokesman as “a devastating signal for Turkish civil society as a whole and the rule of law situation in Turkey”.
Turkish diplomatic sources said on Friday evening that the German Ambassador Jürgen Schulz had been informed that the Turkish Ambassador in Berlin was condemned.
The German ambassador was also informed that the Turkish judiciary was independent and that attempts at intervention from outside were rejected.
Turkey's Justice Minister Bekir Bozdag condemned Berlin's response as an "attempt" to interfere in an ongoing matter.
But no country, "not even Germany," has the right to "interfere in Turkey's internal affairs," he said on Twitter on Friday evening.
However, he had not announced that the German ambassador would be summoned as a countermeasure.
dop/dpa/AFP
