A Turkish court Friday lifted an arrest warrant for nationalist party leader Cem Uzan, a member of a business family at war with the government, after he flew by helicopter to the court to answer charges of insulting Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Uzan's lawyer said.
"The arrest warrant was lifted after he submitted a written defence. He rejected the charges," lawyer Halil Sahin Dost told AFP.
The lawyer was speaking from the north-western city of Bursa, where Uzan flew on a lightning trip from Istanbul shortly after the judge ordered his arrest for failing to appear in court.
The judicial pressure on Uzan followed a police raid on his posh home in Istanbul late Thursday as part of a probe into alleged large-scale fraud in his family's crumbling business empire.