Major rival to Turkey’s Erdogan vows to fight on as court jails him on corruption charges ahead of trial
Protesters react to tear gas sprays as they clash with riot police during a demonstration following the arrest of Istanbul's mayor
(CNN) — A Turkish court on Sunday jailed the mayor of Istanbul on corruption charges, escalating the crackdown against opposition to the country’s strongman leader President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
Ekrem Imamoglu, Erdogan’s most serious political rival, was arrested at his home on Wednesday just days before he was to be registered as a candidate in the 2028 presidential election. He was formally charged Sunday and detained pending trial.
Imamoglu has denied the charges against him and critics say the arrest represents a dangerous turning point for Turkey which, after years of slow-burn authoritarianism, risks becoming a full-blown autocracy.
“We will, hand in hand, uproot this blow, this black stain on our democracy… I am standing tall, I will not bow down,” Imamoglu said on X.
Turkish police arrested more than 300 people overnight into Saturday, after tens of thousands took to the streets last week in more than a dozen cities to protest Imamoglu’s arrest.
Protesters in the capital Ankara were met with police water cannons on Sunday. In Istanbul, police sprayed protesters with pepper spray, and some officers kicked and hit demonstrators after several fireworks and other objects were thrown at riot police near the city’s municipality building, according to Reuters.
“Many thousands of people are taking to the streets and saying enough is enough, we are tired of his (Erdogan’s) brutal regime, and we need a change immediately,” Former NBA player Enes Kanter Freedom told CNN Sunday. Freedom has been an outspoken critic of Erdogan and on human rights issues in his native Turkey.
“We have to take strong actions otherwise Erdogan is definitely going to destroy a NATO ally,” he added.
Speaking outside the Istanbul courtroom on Sunday, Dilek Imamoglu, the mayor’s wife, said the decision to jail him was politically motivated.
“Our conscience is clear, our head is held high. The decision that was taken unjustly, illegally, has no aspect of justice. All the decisions taken are political,” she said.
Immamoglu was one of 45 people detained as part of the corruption investigation, CNN Turk reported Sunday, including the mayor of Beylikduzu, Mehmet Murat Calik. Later, the Interior Ministry removed Imamoglu and Calik from their mayoral duties.
The first move against Imamoglu, the highly popular mayor of Istanbul for the opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), centered on whether his university degree is valid. Istanbul University said Tuesday it had annulled his degree over irregularities, effectively barring him from running for president.
But the charges against Imamoglu have since swelled into something far greater. Imamoglu and some 100 others associated with him have now been accused of belonging to a criminal group, extortion, bribery and aggravated fraud, according to the Istanbul prosecutor’s office, state media Anadolu reported.
Sunday’s order does not relate to a separate investigation over allegedly aiding the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), which Turkey considers a terrorist organization.
The CHP has described the charges as “a coup attempt.” CHP leader Ozgur Ozel told reporters outside an Istanbul courthouse Sunday that the party will appeal the ruling against Imamoglu and that the Istanbul council will elect an acting mayor to stand in for Imamoglu while they await a ruling, Reuters reported.
Mansur Yavas, the mayor of Ankara, said he had come to the courthouse “without sleeping” and that he was “ashamed” of Turkey’s justice system.
Imamoglu’s supporters have decried his detention as politically motivated and an attempt by Erdogan to take revenge for the punishing defeat of his Justice and Development Party (AK Party) in local and mayoral elections last year.
Some see a personal element to Erdogan’s grudge. Once mayor of Istanbul himself, the CHP has now won three consecutive mayoral elections against Erdogan’s party in Turkey’s biggest city, each by a greater margin than the last.
“We are up against huge bullying,” Imamoglu said after his initial arrest earlier this week. “But I will not back down.”
Erdogan extended his rule into a third decade after winning 2023’s knife-edge presidential election. The next vote is not for three years, but some analysts say Erdogan could call for early elections that would allow him to bypass term limits.
Murat Somer, politics professor at Ozyegin University in Istanbul, said Imamoglu’s detention showed Turkey was undergoing a political transformation from “an open autocratic regime to a Russian- or Belarussian-style, fully authoritarian, autocratic regime.”
Erdogan has dismissed opposition anger as “theatrics” and “slogans” for which Turkey has no time. The president warned late Saturday that “no one in Turkey is outside the scope of the law,” and said his government – now facing mass protests – will “not allow CHP and its supporters to disrupt public order with provocations and disturb the peace of our nation.”
Members of the CHP voted Sunday in the party’s primary election to determine its presidential candidate for 2028. Imamoglu is the sole candidate in the primary.
In an effort to garner support for the jailed political leader, the CHP leader Ozgur Ozel also called on non-party members to vote through a “solidarity ballot box” and called on supporters to continue protesting Imamoglu’s arrest.
“Though Ekrem İmamoğlu is currently on the road to prison, in another sense he is also on the road to presidency,” Ozel said Sunday night while at Istanbul City Hall in Sarachane. “The nation is repelling a coup through solidarity ballot boxes.”
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CNN’s Gul Tuysuz and Jared Formanek contributed reporting.
