Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan said yesterday that mass protests over the arrest of the mayor of Istanbul had turned into a "movement of violence" and said that the main opposition party would be responsible for the injured police officers and the material damage caused.
"As a people, we have followed with astonishment the events that followed after the leader of the main opposition called the people to the streets, and the corruption investigation in Istanbul turned into a movement of violence," said the 71-year-old president.
The arrest of popular opposition leader Ekrem Imamoglu comes at a time of geopolitical turmoil that analysts believe the Turkish leader saw as an opportunity to deal with his most dangerous political opponent.
Imamoglu's arrest, which the opposition called a "coup against the future president," last Wednesday sparked the biggest street protests in Turkey in more than a decade. On Sunday, a court ordered Imamoglu to be held in custody pending trial on corruption charges that he denies. He also faces terrorism charges, Reuters reported.
Despite bans on street gatherings in many cities, largely peaceful anti-government protests continued, with hundreds of thousands of people taking part. More than 1100 people were detained and 123 police officers were injured, the interior minister said yesterday.
Speaking after a cabinet meeting in Ankara, Erdogan said the CHP should stop "provoking" citizens, adding that their "show" would eventually end and that they would be ashamed of the "evil" they had, as he said, inflicted on the country.
As mayor of Turkey's economic and cultural capital of 16 million people, Imamoglu is arguably the second most prominent politician in the country, right after Erdogan.
However, analysts believe that the combination of international circumstances has given Erdogan an opportunity to try to neutralize the main threat to himself in the elections scheduled for 2028, but which could be held earlier, according to the Associated Press.
"There's a really special set of circumstances that allowed him to do this with almost no repercussions, no international condemnation or punishment," Monica Marks, a professor of Middle Eastern studies at New York University Abu Dhabi, told the AP.
The European Union, which has said that Imamoglu's arrest is "deeply concerning" and which has often criticized Turkey's democratic decline, is currently in a weaker position compared to Turkey due to, as Marx states, the "American abandonment" of European defense, Russian aggression and Eurosceptic forces, which use migration as a means of gaining political relevance.
Ankara is in a position to provide support in all these areas. In the military context, Turkey has the second largest army within NATO, as well as a developed defense industry capable of delivering high-tech weapons, such as drones.
During the war in Ukraine, Turkey maintained close relations with both Moscow and Kiev, and repeatedly offered to act as a mediator in peace negotiations.
Turkey has also been strengthened by the collapse of Bashar Assad's government in neighboring Syria, thanks to rebels that Ankara supported for years during the war.
When it comes to migration to Europe, Ankara has acted as a kind of barrier since signing the 2016 agreement, pledging to prevent migrants from crossing its borders and seas to reach the EU. All of this increases Turkey's geopolitical importance to Europe, the AP points out.
President Donald Trump's isolationist stance has also strengthened Erdogan's position, Marks pointed out, adding that "the normalization of populist authoritarianism makes what Erdogan is doing less shocking and less worrisome for Western democracies."
While international factors provided Erdogan with the opportunity to act against Imamoglu, the timing of the move was influenced by developments on the domestic political scene.
Berk Esen, a political scientist at Sabanci University in Istanbul, told the AP that the CHP's decision to endorse Imamoglu as its presidential candidate for the 2028 election was key to his arrest.
“Erdogan hoped that he could slow down, if not completely thwart, Imamoglu’s presidential ambitions,” Esen said. “But when the CHP decided to hold the (presidential) primaries, it became clear that Imamoglu would emerge as a candidate, and Erdogan wanted to act against him immediately.”
Another internal factor working in Erdogan's favor is the peace process that has begun, albeit uncertainly, with the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), which has waged an insurgency against the Turkish state for 40 years and is considered a terrorist organization by Turkey and its Western allies.
Over 1100 people have been detained at mostly peaceful protests that have been taking place across Turkey despite bans.
Many observers believe that this process could be, at least in part, an attempt to win over Turkey's pro-Kurdish party to support Erdogan's bid for another presidential term. Similarly, the process could serve to separate the Kurds from the CHP, giving Erdogan a divided opposition, Esen points out.
Imamoglu has emerged as the main challenger to Erdogan's 22-year rule since he was elected mayor of Istanbul in 2019, ending a quarter of a century of rule by parties from Turkey's conservative Islamist tradition.
According to Esen, he is the “perfect” candidate to oppose Erdogan - relatively young at 53, from a conservative Sunni background but with a “modern” wife, and coming from the Black Sea business world that provides him with informal connections across the country.
He has been the target of multiple criminal charges in recent years that could lead to prison sentences and political bans. Last week, a university revoked his degree, effectively barring him from running for president.
All of this makes his arrest and detention seem unnecessary, as it only increases the risk of the public backlash now unfolding on the streets across Turkey.
The mayor's supporters say the arrest of Imamoglu shows a lack of justice in Turkey. "I think an injustice has been done to Imamoglu. They put a man in prison for no reason," Adem Bali, a 22-year-old construction worker, told Reuters.
Selim Koru, a political analyst at the Economic Policy Research Foundation of Turkey, claims that by persecuting Imamoglu in this way, the authorities have only made him appear as “a perfectly acceptable politician who has been unfairly disqualified.”
Koru stated in a column on the Substack platform: “They had to turn him into a villain to give weight to their claims… The strategic logic is immediately obvious. The presidential elections are scheduled for 2028, so the regime wanted to get rid of Imamoglu before then, weaken the CHP along the way, and then take a few years for things to settle down.”
Regarding the significance of Imamoglu's imprisonment, Monica Marks said it represents "the last stop on Turkey's political train before it arrives at the platform of a complete dictatorship."
Bonus video:
