Turkey arrests talent manager over trying to overthrow the government

A Turkish court arrested a well-known talent manager over the charge of attempting to overthrow the government in an investigation connected to nationwide protests in 2013, a court document seen by Reuters showed.

Ayse Barim was initially detained on Friday and eight actors were summoned to give statements to the court as witnesses in her file.

According to her statement to the prosecutor, Barim denied the charges and said she had been to the area of the 2013 protests a few times individually as an observer and to accompany the people she worked with.

Barim denied the charges and said she did not coordinate actors she is working with or request them to support the protests, the court document showed.

"My job as a manager is to manage the career of the actors I work with and represent them in the best possible way. These artists have their own ideas, wills and decisions. I did not organize anything by directing their ideas," Barim said, according to transcript of her statement.

In 2013, small demonstrations against plans to build a shopping mall in Gezi Park, in Istanbul's central Taksim Square, swelled into hundreds of thousands of people protesting against the government nationwide - and prompted a harsh crackdown.

According to the court, Barim had "intensive communication" with defendants in the Gezi Park trial at the time of the protests. These defendants include businessman Osman Kavala, who was sentenced to life in prison without parole in April 2022.

Kavala has faced various charges, including espionage, financing the Gezi Park protests and involvement in a failed coup against Erdogan's government in 2016. He has been in prison since November 2017.

Human rights groups say 11 people were killed and more than 8,000 injured in the state response, and more than 3,000 were arrested.

President Tayyip Erdogan's government said the crackdown was warranted given threats to the state, and he has called the protesters "looters" who were partly funded from abroad, a claim denied by defendants and civil society groups.