Erdogan steps up sweeping crackdown on opposition in Turkey
The shockwaves from the 2024 local elections have continued to reverberate across Turkey. More than a year after the dramatic defeat of the government's Islamist-nationalist coalition led by President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the authorities have been carrying out a systematic and ruthless clampdown across the country.
For weeks, arrests of opposition officials have been on the rise. Dozens of trials have piled up, with new charges added regularly. The latest wave of arrests took place on Saturday, May 31, when 28 people were taken into custody in the early hours by police as part of a corruption investigation at Istanbul's city hall. The city's mayor, Ekrem Imamoglu, has been behind bars for more than two months.
A presidential candidate from the Republican People's Party (CHP), Turkey's largest political party since the local elections, and Erdogan's main rival, the mayor was arrested on March 19 on charges of "corruption and terrorism."
Mass protests
It was Imamoglu's imprisonment and the dozen or so legal proceedings brought against him that sparked the largest mass protests the country had seen in more than a decade, defying police repression and taking over new spaces to protest week after week. Imamoglu denied any wrongdoing, denounced the lack of substance to the charges against him and condemned the fact that these were based mainly on allegations from "anonymous witnesses." This practice has been used in many political cases in recent years, from the philanthropist Osman Kavala – arrested in 2017 and sentenced to life in 2022 – to pro-Kurdish leader Selahattin Demirtas, imprisoned since 2016 and sentenced to 42 years.
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