Brussels – Early this morning (March 19), Turkish police arrested Istanbul Mayor Ekrem Imamoğlu as part of a major investigation into links between corruption and terrorism. Imamoğlu is one of the prominent opposition party leaders to authoritarian President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, the Republican People’s Party (CHP).
According to Turkish Anadolu news agency reports, there were arrest warrants for another one hundred people. Authorities reportedly closed several streets and banned demonstrations in Istanbul for four days to avert possible protests by supporters of the first citizen. In a post on his X account this morning, Imamoğlu said he was “entrusting myself not only to the 16 million residents of Istanbul but to the 86 million citizens of Türkiye and all who uphold democracy and justice worldwide. The will of the people cannot be silenced through intimidation or illegal acts.”
CHP president Özgür Özel added, “Currently, there is a power in place that prevents the nation from choosing the next president.” Özel called Imamoğlu’s detention “a coup attempt against our next president.” Indeed, a campaign by Turkish authorities to criminalize the CHP, accusing it of ties to the Kurdish PKK separatists, has been underway for months. As early as February, numerous local officials and elected members of the opposition party were arrested in several cities across the country. When they are not arrested, Erdogan frequently replaces them with government-appointed officials. Since the 2024 local elections, the Interior Ministry has dismissed eight mayors from the pro-Kurdish DEM party and two from the CHP, a practice that the European Parliament recently condemned.
The arrest of the Istanbul mayor – whose residence had been searched earlier in the day yesterday – comes just days before the CHP primary elections, scheduled for March 23, when Imamoğlu was supposed to be listed as the candidate to challenge the hegemony of Erdogan, Turkey’s president for more than a decade, in the next presidential election in 2028. As early as Monday, however, Istanbul University decided to cancel Imamoğlu‘s degree due to alleged irregularities in his 1990 transfer from a private university in northern Cyprus to the faculty of business administration, effectively preventing him from running for president. According to Turkish law, a bachelor’s degree is mandatory to run for election.
Imamoğlu defined as “illegal” the Istanbul University’s move — widely perceived at home and abroad as politically motivated. The European Socialist Party pointed to the president as responsible, condemning in a note Erdogan’s attempt to “jeopardize the presidential candidacy of the mayor of Istanbul.” In May 2023, Erdogan was re-elected president of Turkey, defeating the challenger from the Republican People’s Party, economist Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu. However, it was a much narrower victory than might have been expected, ending with 52.16 percent of the vote for Erdogan and 47.84 for Kılıçdaroğlu. A head-to-head contest that raised concerns for Erdogan ahead of the next round of elections.
