Turkish police have detained more than 1,100 people, including journalists, since the arrest of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan's main rival sparked the country's worst unrest in years, a minister said on Monday.
The demonstrations began in Istanbul after Ekrem Imamoglu's arrest last week and have since spread to more than 55 of Turkey's 81 provinces, sparking clashes with riot police and drawing international condemnation.
The popular 53-year-old has been widely seen as the only politician who could defeat Turkey's longtime leader Erdogan at the ballot box.
In just four days he went from being the mayor of Istanbul -- a post that launched Erdogan's political rise decades earlier -- to being arrested, interrogated, jailed and stripped of the mayorship as a result of a graft and terror probe.
On Sunday, he was overwhelmingly voted in as the main opposition CHP's candidate for the 2028 presidential run, with some 15 million people casting their ballots in a show of support for Imamoglu.
Observers said it was the looming primary that triggered the move against Imamoglu, the main political rival of Erdogan who has dominated Turkey's politics since 2003, first as prime minister and then as president.
His jailing drew sharp condemnation from Germany, which called it "totally unacceptable" as Greece said moves to undermine civil liberties "cannot be tolerated".
And the EU warned Ankara it needed to demonstrate "a clear commitment to democratic norms". Overnight, France's foreign ministry said it was a "serious attack on democracy".
On Monday, students at the main universities in Istanbul and Ankara called for a boycott of lectures.
Young protesters were also preparing to hold a rally at 1400 GMT by Besiktas port on the Bosphorus, ahead of the main nightly rally outside City Hall at 1730 GMT.
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