Istanbul mayor, Erdogan's main political rival, arrested

BarcelonaTurkish police arrested Ekrem Imamoglu, the mayor of Istanbul and main political rival of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, on Wednesday. He was arrested at his home in a massive police operation, an operation the opposition has called political harassment.

Since he was born, win the 2019 municipal elections and ended a quarter-century of Islamist rule in Istanbul, Imamoglu had become the Turkish politician with the best chance of overshadowing Erdogan. He was now presenting himself as the main opposition force ahead of the upcoming presidential elections in 2028. This Sunday, his party, the social-democratic Republican People's Party (CHP), is holding primaries to ratify its militant support for Imamoglu's candidacy for the upcoming elections.

The Prosecutor's Office has opened two cases against Imamoglu: one for "corruption, bribery and bid-rigging" and another for "collaborating with terrorist groups," referring to the banned Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), a party that Ankara considers a terrorist organization. According to the judicial investigation, Imamoglu allegedly established ties with the PKK through an alliance between his party and the pro-Kurdish leftist DEM party for the 2024 municipal elections, when he won the Istanbul mayoralty again. With this strategy, several figures close to DEM, the third-largest force in the Turkish Parliament, ran for the CHP. Many voters for the pro-Kurdish party also supported the Social Democratic Party, which became the largest party in Turkey, ousting Erdogan's Islamist AKP.

The opposition denounces persecution

All opposition parties in Turkey condemned the arrest. His party has made it clear that it sees it as an attempt by Erdogan to remove his main rival from politics. "Turkey is currently facing an attempted coup," CHP leader Özgür Özel told Halk TV. "In four days, there will be primaries. This morning, our candidate was arrested. The CHP is leading the polls [for the presidential election], in some polls by a margin of 20 points. I believe 100 percent that Imamoglu will win against Erdogan, but Erdogan must believe it 100 percent," he added.

Imamoglu now has six pending trials and faces up to 20 years in prison. "This immoral and tyrannical attitude will be fought by the resilience and will of our people," he said in a video during his arrest. "I stand firm. Let no one worry. I love you all. I love my country," he added as he dressed to be taken to the police station.

Before his arrest, Istanbul University, where Imamoglu graduated in business administration in 1994, revoked his diploma on Tuesday. A decision that could block his presidential candidacy because in Turkey, having a university education is a mandatory requirement to be president. The opposition sees the measure as a further step in political persecution, while the university justified itself by arguing that it was acting in response to the Prosecutor's Office's investigation into an alleged crime of "falsifying official documents."

The politician is not the only one being persecuted by the government; a total of 106 people close to Imamoglu or the CHP have open legal cases.