The Turkish Police arrested on Wednesday the mayor of Istanbul, the social democrat Ekrem Imamoglu, within the framework of a judicial investigation for alleged corruption and “collaboration with terrorist groups”, in reference to the Kurdish guerrillas.
A great police deployment surrounded the mayor’s house in the early morning and registered his home. The councilor and numerous collaborators of his were arrested, as well as municipal charges of the party, the social democrat Chp.
Imamoglu won the Mayor’s Office of Istanbul in the 2019 elections, ending a quarter of the Islamist municipal government, and renewed the mandate in the March elections last year, becoming the most likely rival of the Islamist president of Turkey, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, in the next presidential.
The CHP claims that these elections, scheduled for 2028, moved forward and had summoned primary primaries throughout Turkey to designate his candidate, taking it for granted that he was going to be Imamoglu.
Yesterday, the University of Istanbul, in which Imamogu graduated in business administration in 1994, annulled its diploma alleging irregularities in its admission in 1990, which would block its presidential candidacy, since having university education is a mandatory requirement to be president.
In addition, the Prosecutor’s Office has opened several investigations in the last months against the mayor and other figures of his party, and two districts have been sent to preventive detention.
The two judicial causes now open against Imamoglu and 106 people from their surroundings or Chp accuse the councilor, on the one hand, of being the head of a criminal organization with profit, with acts of corruption, bribery and manipulated tenders.
On the other hand, they blame links with the proscribed Workers Party of Kurdistan (PKK), the Kurdish guerrillas of Turkey, through the initiative known as ‘Urban Consensus’, which the CHP and the party of the left Prokurda De demon launched before the municipal elections of March 2024.
Through this strategy, several figures close to the DEM, third party of the Parlamente Turkish, presented themselves in the ranks of the CHP, while many usual Voters of the DEM supported the social democratic formation, which thus became for the first time in decades in the most voted party in Turkey, unseating the AKP, the Islamist formation of Erdogan.
The raid against Imamoglu and its collaborators has been carried out with a huge police deployment, access to public transport in the city center and the governor’s office has announced a prohibition of demonstrations or marches of protest in the next four days, until Sunday.
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