European Committee of the Regions awards democracy prize to Istanbul Mayor İmamoğlu, jailed for a year

Brussels – The European Committee of the Regions (CoR) sent a strong message to the regime of Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, President of Turkey since 2003: Istanbul Mayor Ekrem İmamoğlu, a leading member of the Republican People’s Party (CHP) and Erdoğan’s main challenger, who has been in prison for a year, is the winner of the Mayor Paweł Adamowicz Award. This award recognises courage and excellence in promoting freedom, solidarity, and equality. The interim mayor of Istanbul, Nuri Aslan, attended the CoR plenary session on behalf of the winner, Ekrem İmamoğlu. The award commemorates Paweł Bogdan Adamowicz, mayor of Gdańsk from 1998 until his assassination in 2019 by a 27-year-old man who stabbed him during a charity event in the Polish city.

 İmamoğlu has been mayor of Turkey’s largest city since 2019 and was arrested on 19 March 2025 along with several municipal officials accused of running a criminal organisation, accepting bribes, extortion, and bid rigging. The mayor has strongly denied all charges, and critics believe that the arrest is politically motivated, aimed at weakening the main opposition. His arrest sparked the largest wave of public protests in Turkey in the last ten years. 

The announcement of Ekrem İmamoğlu’s award was made during the plenary session of the European Committee of the Regions by its President, Kata Tüttő. “This award honours something rare: civic courage and exposure, leadership that remains even in hostile environments,” she said. Paweł Bogdan Adamowicz’s wife, Magdalena Adamowicz, now a MEP, also spoke: “The award in my husband’s name is not a symbolic gesture: it must be a real commitment. Europe must see those who pay a personal price for the values that we must all learn to defend courageously, and at any cost,” Magdalena Adamowicz noted. “Ekrem, you are paying this price. We cannot allow you to remain alone; we cannot allow only a few brave people to defend values that we do not want to abandon. Because if you want to be respected, defend democracy; it cannot defend itself,” she said, addressing the mayor of Istanbul, İmamoğlu, directly. 

At a press conference, following the award ceremony, interim mayor Nuri Aslan explained that “ultimately, the struggle of a mayor in Poland is the same as that of a mayor in Istanbul, Turkey. In this context, “Europe needs us, and we need Europe. In reality, we are a single force,” he added. “We are convinced that, as soon as possible, with a Republican Party government, Turkey and the European Union will succeed in integrating. Because we are part of Europe. We have never considered ourselves separate,” Aslan concluded.