The detention of Ekrem Imamoǧlu, Istanbul’s mayor since 2019, triggered huge protests across Turkey. The whole country is in turmoil. The majority of the population believes, that the detention is unlawful.

„There is still a much bigger cabbage in the saddlebag“, said Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoǧan suggestively. The University of Istanbul had just canceled Ekrem Imamoǧlu’s diploma. Imamoǧlu, the mayor of Istanbul since 2019 was then the prospective presidential candidate of the opposition party Cstill HP (Cumhuriyet Halk Partisi – Republican People’s Party). According to the Turkish Constitution presidential candidates must have a university diploma, a residual of the first years of the Republic. Then, the  day after, in the morning of 19^th March, police surrounded Imamoǧlu’s house and took him under custody. He was accused of corruption, extortion, money laundering and of being leader of a terrorist organization. That was the beginning of a series of custodies and detentions of municipal high-level employees and experts. Many mayors of further districts in Istanbul were arrested simultaneously.  

Was that the „bigger cabbage“ then? If yes, how did Erdoǧan know in advance? After all, he keeps talking about an independent judiciary and rule of law in Turkey.  Erdoǧan also forgets about the judicial principle of the presumption of innocence until there is incontestable evidence for the defendant’s guilt. Actually, the detainees should be released by the court, pending trial upon them. In 1998, Erdoǧan himself had faced once, as mayor of Istanbul, an accusation of ‚incitement to hatred based on religion and race‘. He had not been in detention back then, as he had been tried. He could still exercise his office as mayor of Istanbul. Afterwards he had been sentenced to ten months in prison and a heavy fine in 1999 without having been locked up in prison like Imamoǧlu, who still, apart from this, is there without a statement of charges. 

Erdoǧan only wants to get rid of his most dangerous rival for the next presidential elections, at least this is the conviction of almost 70 % of the population. In fact, meanwhile hardly anyone believes that there is an independent judiciary and rule of law in Turkey.

But things were to get much worse. The second wave of arrestments followed soon: İzmir, „the Pearl of the Agean“, was the next big city to ‚clean up‘. On July 1^st, at the start of last week, the former Izmir mayor, Tunç Soyer, has been detained over corruption, together with about 100 other persons, at the end of the same week followed by the mayors of Antalya, Adana and Adıyaman, Muhittin Böcek, Zeydan Karalar and Abdurrahman Tutdere, all of them from the oppositional CHP.

In the last communal elections on 31 March 2024  CHP won all big cities: Istanbul, Izmir. Adana, Antalya and Ankara, the capital city,  once again after 2019. But Adıyaman, one of the most conservative-guessed provinces, suddenly voted for the opposing CHP. Most of the 81 provinces fell to the CHP. The last elections showed clearly, that the political tide was turning.

„The people are asserting their will!“

Imamoǧlu’s detention triggered a storm of indignation. Protesters keep on gathering on the streets, mainly students. In fact, they forced CHP eventually to take the lead with its leader Özgür Özel and organize mass meetings. The first meeting took place in front of the city townhall in Saraçhane, where hundreds of thousands  came together. The meeting tours are running under the slogan „The people are asserting their will!“ The meeting in İzmir on May 19^th, the National Day celebrating the beginning of the independence war 1919, gathered about 2 million demonstrators. CHP had organized meetings in Yozgat and Konya before, two of the most deeply conservative provinces known as AKP strongholds, with overwhelming turnout. The last meeting took place on 5^th July in Amasya, equally with an overwhelming participation of its inhabitants.

Erdoǧan’s way up to a one-man regime

The much younger – 54-year-old -, energetic and very popular Ekrem İmamoǧlu  was supposed to challenge Recep Tayyip Erdoǧan, the incumbent president of the Turkish Republic since 2014, in the next presidential elections in 2028. In fact, Erdoǧan is in power since his AKP (Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi – Justice and Development Party) won parliamentary elections in 2002 with an overwhelming majority of votes. His victory was due to a heavy economic crisis and also to then still obvious deficiencies of the Turkish democracy. However, after almost 23 years of Erdoǧan’s leadership, the country finds itself in much more precarious conditions than in those days: High inflation rate (about 35% according to the Turkish Statistics Institution TÜİK, but around 74% says ENAG, the alternative Inflation Research Group), the younger generation searching for its happiness rather abroad, notably in Europe, than in its own country with an unemployment rate of 28,8 %, with half of the working population plowing for minimum wage. The once thriving agriculture is lying down, and now, on top of that, recently devastated by a sudden outbreak of frost in mid-April.

Islamist Fethullah Gülen – First Friend, than Foe

Besides, all hopes for democratization seem to have all gone with the wind, particularly after the violent suppression of the Gezi protests of 2013 and also in the aftermath of the failed Gülenist coup of 15 July 2016. Hundreds of thousands of citizens alleged of being followers or collaborators of the Islamist preacher Fethullah Gülen (he died in 2024 in Pennsylvania, USA, where he lived in exile since 1999) were thrown into prison, properties of many business people were confiscated under the accusation of being a Gülen sympathizer or activist.

In a huge and long series of trials 2007 – 2013 – called Ergenekon-trials –  a lot of members of the secular elites from the military personel and journalists to some associations of the civil society were accused of planning to overthrow the Islamic-conservative government of Erdoǧan, then prime minister. At that time, too, like in Imamoǧlu’s trial, there was no real evidence and still the prosecutors relied on testimonies of so-called „secret witnesses“. It is important to notice here, that the Turkish judiciary and police were interspersed with Gülenist judges, prosecutors and investigators, as Erdoǧan and Fethullah Gülen had worked hand in hand to seize power to undermine the secular system and establish an Islamist regime. Step by step the Gülenists had subverted the Turkish state apparatus and key positions.

However, the Erdoǧan – Gülen complicity broke down in December 2013. Since the Gülenists in the police and intelligence apparatus became savvy not only with ongoing corruption in politics and bureaucracy, but also with wiretapping, they made sure that recorded compromising material came to the public, including tapes of Erdoǧan’s dialogue  with his son Bilal, when he instructed his son to „nullify“ the millions in the domestic safe.

After the failed coup attempt on July 15^th 2016 the AKP government declared the Gülenist movement to  be a terrorist organization and went after everyone who it arbitrarily accused of being a Gülenist, from state officials to business people, from teachers and journalists to normal citizens.

April 21^st 2016  the Supreme Court rescinded all verdicts in the Ergenekon-trial because of the failure to prove the existence of an „Ergenekon conspiracy“ to overthrow the head of government, Recep Tayyip Erdoǧan; moreover, the defence right of the accused had not been respected.

 Erdoǧan – Total loss of confidence

So, at that time the Supreme Court was still a secure place for appellation, but today the whole judiciary is totally politicized and has been turned into a weapon against political rivals and regime critics.

As a result, according to recent surveys about 70% of the electorate does not believe in the independence of the courts and the impartiality of the judges. They believe that the arrest of the mayor of Istanbul is unfounded and based on flimsy accusations. They believe that the only reason why Imamoǧlu is sitting in prison is that Erdoǧan is striving for  dismantling his most dangerous rival, for Imamoǧlu won municipal elections three times since 2019. After his first victory the High Election Board – an institution meanwhile very close to the government – had repeated the elections; afterwards Imamoǧlu had much more votes on his side than before: Difference to the AKP-candidate was first 13.000, then after the second round more than 800.000. And again, after the the elections in 2024 Imamoǧlu was once more mayor of Istanbul.

President Erdoǧan fights acrimoniously to keep his total grip on the power strips in the country. In fact, Erdoǧan had already made his comprehension of democracy clear as he declared in 1996 – he was the mayor of Istanbul then: „Democracy is a tramway. We’ll go as far as we can and get off there. Democracy is not the aim, it is (only) a means to achieve the goal.“ Maybe according to him he has already reached the last stop of the democracy tram – the „illiberate station“, and now wants to change to the dictatorship ride.

Turkey continues to be the country with the most journalists in prison, many of their colleagues still living in exile today. Freedom of speech and freedom of press are in permanent danger. Objecting Erdoǧan or his policies publicly can have serious consequences. Recently, two of – maybe about zhree or four- oppositional TV– channels (the rest is throughout pro-regime respectively pro-Erdoǧan), Halk TV and Sözcü TV, have been penalized with a broadcasting ban of ten days. Both channels made an appeal, but only that of Halk TV has been accepted – for now. The media system is extremely polarized and focused on internal issues. The regime-adoring media does not cover the enthusiastic and well-orchestrated mass meetings of the opposition party. Well, the counter-media does, and obviously with a very high audience rate – very unsettling for Erdoǧan.

Former party co- leaders of leftist pro-Kurdish HDP (Halkların Demokrasi Partisi – People’s Democracy Party), Selahattin Demirtaş and Figen Yüksekdaǧ are both in jail since 2016, sentenced to 40, respectively 30 years in prison, despite the verdict of the European Court of Human Right to release them. The same for Osman Kavala, an entrepreneur and  human rights activist, who was alleged of having organized the Gezi-protests in 2013. Kavala had been arrested in 2017. In 2022 he was convicted to life sentence without parole. Also Can Atalay, who is a human rights lawyer, was elected deputy in 2023. He has a seat in parliament for TIP, the Worker’s Party in Turkey, but has got 18 years of imprisonment, because he had defended Gezi-protesters.

Erdoǧan’s Gezi-trauma has still been aking over the past twelve years after Gezi Now, in the course of raising nationwide protests again, will he stick to his authoritarian prioject?

Meanwhile Ekrem İmamoǧlu is elected official presidential candidate of the CHP. 15 million people signed for him as their favorite candidate. Erdoǧan vigorously tries with all the means and agents at hand – judiciary, media, police etc. etc. – not only to oust his most dangerous rival from the next presidential elections, but also to create a domesticated main opposition party, which does not cause him any great trouble in future. His AKP is meanwhile a state party and the Turkish political system is a party state, with one man at its top: Recep Tayyip Erdoǧan.

In one of the meetings the Turkish opposition leader Özgür Özel spoke very upfront towards Erdoǧan: „You are not a global leader, but a local dictator.“

It seems as if the „global leader“ is about to be  in great trouble in the upcoming months.

The opposition is now calling for early elections, no doubt that the majority of the population will support it.

Hopefully, the world soon has one autocrat less.