{"id":421748,"date":"2025-03-19T11:03:52","date_gmt":"2025-03-19T10:03:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/2025\/03\/19\/turchia-sindaco-istanbul-imamoglu-arresto\/"},"modified":"2025-03-19T13:25:16","modified_gmt":"2025-03-19T12:25:16","slug":"turkey-erdogan-has-ekrem-imamoglu-mayor-of-istanbul-and-opposition-leader-arrested","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/2025\/03\/19\/turkey-erdogan-has-ekrem-imamoglu-mayor-of-istanbul-and-opposition-leader-arrested\/","title":{"rendered":"Turkey: Erdogan has Ekrem Imamo\u011flu, mayor of Istanbul and opposition leader, arrested"},"content":{"rendered":"

Brussels – Early this\u00a0morning\u00a0(March 19),\u00a0Turkish police arrested Istanbul Mayor Ekrem Imamo\u011flu<\/strong> as part of a major investigation into links between corruption and terrorism.\u00a0Imamo\u011flu is one of the prominent opposition party leaders to authoritarian President Recep Tayyip Erdo\u011fan, the Republican People’s Party (CHP).<\/p>\n

According to Turkish Anadolu<\/em> news agency reports, there were\u00a0arrest warrants<\/strong> for another one\u00a0hundred 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<\/a>\u00a0on his X account this morning, Imamo\u011flu said he was\u00a0“entrusting myself not only to the 16 million residents of Istanbul but to the 86 million citizens of T\u00fcrkiye and all who uphold democracy and justice worldwide. The will of the people cannot be silenced through intimidation or illegal acts.”<\/p>\n

CHP president\u00a0\u00d6zg\u00fcr \u00d6zel <\/strong>added,\u00a0“Currently, there is a power in place that prevents the nation from choosing the next president.” \u00d6zel called Imamo\u011flu’s detention “a coup attempt against our next president<\/strong>.” Indeed, a campaign by Turkish authorities to criminalize the CHP,\u00a0accusing 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<\/strong>, a practice<\/a>\u00a0that the\u00a0European Parliament recently condemned.<\/p>\n

The arrest of the Istanbul mayor\u00a0– whose residence had been searched earlier in the day yesterday – comes just days before the CHP primary elections, scheduled for March 23, when Imamo\u011flu 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,\u00a0Istanbul University\u00a0decided to cancel Imamo\u011flu<\/strong>‘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.<\/p>\n

Imamo\u011flu\u00a0defined as “illegal” the Istanbul University’s move — widely perceived at home and abroad as politically motivated.\u00a0The 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.”<\/strong> In May 2023, Erdogan was re-elected president of Turkey, defeating the challenger from the Republican People’s Party, economist Kemal K\u0131l\u0131\u00e7daro\u011flu<\/b>. 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 K\u0131l\u0131\u00e7daro\u011flu. A head-to-head contest that raised concerns for\u00a0Erdogan ahead of the next round of elections.<\/p>\n

“Once again, an attack on democracy in Turkey. We condemn what is happening during\u00a0these hours in\u00a0Turkey with the arrest of Imamo\u011flu, the representative of the largest opposition party, and the ban on demonstrations to express dissent,” the PD delegation to the European Parliament<\/strong> said in a note. “President Erdogan is afraid of democracy and its rules. While expressing full solidarity with all opposition forces and Mayor Imamo\u011flu, whose immediate release we demand, we urge the European Commission and the Council not to close their eyes and do everything to restore full democracy,” the note continued.<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The arrest of Erdogan’s main challenger just days before the Republican People’s Party primary elections. Already last year, Turkey’s authoritarian president had ten opposition mayors replaced or arrested<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7527,"featured_media":421739,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"episode_type":"","audio_file":"","podmotor_file_id":"","podmotor_episode_id":"","cover_image":"","cover_image_id":"","duration":"","filesize":"","filesize_raw":"","date_recorded":"","explicit":"","block":"","jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":{"format":"standard","override":[{"template":"1","parallax":"1","fullscreen":"1","layout":"right-sidebar","sidebar":"default-sidebar","second_sidebar":"default-sidebar","sticky_sidebar":"1","share_position":"top","share_float_style":"share-monocrhome","show_featured":"1","show_post_meta":"1","show_post_author":"1","show_post_author_image":"1","show_post_date":"1","post_date_format":"default","post_date_format_custom":"Y\/m\/d","show_post_category":"1","show_post_reading_time":"0","post_reading_time_wpm":"300","post_calculate_word_method":"str_word_count","show_zoom_button":"0","zoom_button_out_step":"2","zoom_button_in_step":"3","show_post_tag":"1","show_prev_next_post":"1","show_popup_post":"1","number_popup_post":"1","show_author_box":"0","show_post_related":"1","show_inline_post_related":"0"}],"image_override":[{"single_post_thumbnail_size":"crop-500","single_post_gallery_size":"crop-500"}],"trending_post_position":"meta","trending_post_label":"Trending","sponsored_post_label":"Sponsored by","disable_ad":"0","subtitle":""},"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_override_counter":{"view_counter_number":"0","share_counter_number":"0","like_counter_number":"0","dislike_counter_number":"0"},"footnotes":""},"categories":[25712],"tags":[30759,30760,26484,26746],"class_list":["post-421748","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-general-news","tag-ekrem-imamoglu-en","tag-istanbul-en","tag-turkey-en-2"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/421748","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7527"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=421748"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/421748\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":421804,"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/421748\/revisions\/421804"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/421739"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=421748"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=421748"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=421748"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}