Dozens of people including journalists appeared before a court in Istanbul on Friday, accused of attending banned demonstrations and disobeying police orders to disperse during anti-government protests that were triggered by the jailing of the city\u2019s opposition mayor, Ekrem Imamoglu.
\nImamoglu, seen as the main challenger to President Recep Tayyip Erdogan\u2019s 22-year rule, was arrested on March 19 and jailed days later on corruption charges, The Associated Press said.
\nHis imprisonment has been widely viewed as politically motivated and sparked nationwide protests. The government insists T\u00fcrkiye\u2019s judiciary is independent and that the courts operate independently.
\nA total of 189 defendants, most of them university students, began defending themselves over charges of participating in banned protests and non-compliance with orders to disperse. Some have also been charged with carrying arms.
\nFour photojournalists and three reporters who were covering the demonstrations were also on trial. The court, however, on Friday decided to separate their case from the main trial.
\nThe defendants are among more than 2,000 people who were detained for taking part in the country\u2019s largest mass demonstrations in more than a decade.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Dozens of people including journalists appeared before a court in Istanbul on Friday, accused of attending banned demonstrations and disobeying police orders to disperse during anti-government protests that were triggered by the jailing of the city\u2019s opposition mayor, Ekrem Imamoglu. Imamoglu, seen as the main challenger to President Recep Tayyip Erdogan\u2019s 22-year rule, was arrested …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":46741,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13,25],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-46750","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-international","category-news-2"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46750","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=46750"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46750\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":46751,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46750\/revisions\/46751"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/46741"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=46750"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=46750"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=46750"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}