Türkiye: Students protest – and demand Erdoğan’s resignation

After the arrest of Istanbul Mayor Ekrem Imamoğlu, the criticism of the Turkish government of President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan continues. Students of various universities in NATO country continued to go to the streets and demanded the resignation of the head of state. Imamoğlus CHP party also called on nationwide protests. The CHP said on the X platform in at least 14 cities and provinces of the country in the evening. In addition to Istanbul, Ankara, Antalya, Izmir and Adana were included.

In Istanbul, the police acted with rubber floors and tear gas against participants of a demonstration in the evening. As journalists from the AFP news agency reported, thousands of people had previously gathered in front of the city’s town hall, and there was initially no information about injuries. As AFP reporters also reported, police officers tried to keep protesters from Taksim-Platz, who was the central place of protests against President Recep Tayyip Erdogan in 2013.

On site, the head of the opposition party Chp and party friend Imamoglus, Özgür Özel, protested sharply against the police approach. “Who are you spraying Türkiye’s hope with tear gas?” Said Özel, from the amount of protesters, the boos and demands for the resignation of Erdogan.

Chancellor Olaf Scholz called Imamoğlus a “very, very bad sign”. Opposition and government should be in competition with each other and not the opposition to court. In Turkey, worrying is growing before Imamoğlus as a mayor.

Imamoğlu was arrested together with many other people on Wednesday morning, a few days before his planned nomination as a presidential candidate of the largest opposition party. This was justified by the public prosecutor with allegations of terrorism and corruption. Oppositional as well as observers accuse the government of being behind the arrest and thus wanting to switch off a political competitor.

With Imamoğlu, at least 87 more people were arrested after a report from the state news agency Anadolu, and around 106 is determined. Among them are two Mayors of Istanbul and Imamoğlu. The procedure is under confidentiality. It became known on Wednesday evening that also against a company whose co -owner is Imamoğlu, in the context of the proceedings.

The background to the terrorist investigations is a cooperation between the CHP and the Prourdish DES party in the local elections. Anadolu quoted the prosecutor’s office cited the banned Kurdish Workers’ Party PKK through this cooperation.

The CHP chairman Özgür Özel called the arrest of his party friend a “civil coup”. Erdoğan’s party defends itself against the accusation and called him the “summit of political unreasonation”. Imamoğlu called on X prosecutors and judges to defend the judicial system. “You cannot and must not be silent.”

In many cities in Türkiye, students again took to the streets. In Istanbul, in speech choirs, they called for the resignation of the government, as the “Birgün” portal reported. The CHP called on people to gather in front of the city administration building in Istanbul this evening. Yesterday, thousands had come together under large police contingent – although protests in the province of Istanbul had been banned for four days. There was also a call to protests for Ankara tonight.

It is still unclear whether the CHP politician will be used. His lawyer Kemal Polat told the dpa news agency, if this is done in connection with terrorist allegations, Imamoğlu could be revoked the office of mayor and a forced administrator was used in his place.

In Turkey, numerous mayors of the party and recently also the CHP were removed due to terrorist investigation by their office and replaced by government-related forced administrators. The dismissal of the mayor of the 16 million metropolis Istanbul would be an unprecedented process.

Imamoğlus victory in 2019 in Istanbul is considered the largest defeat in the AK party of Erdoğan. This had ruled the big city until then. Imamoğlu won again in Istanbul 2024. Erdoğan thus missed his most important goal of regaining the politically and economically important metropolis. In Istanbul, Erdoğan’s political advancement had also started when he was elected mayor in 1994.

The political analyst Berk Esen told the dpa that the procedure against Imamoğlu was the same against the “remains” of the election institutions and “the Turkey could drive towards an authoritarian regime in which elections no longer play a role, as in Venezuela or Russia”.

In spite of the arrest, the CHP plans to set up Imamoğlu as a presidential candidate. Instead of only the members, the party now calls on all people in Turkey to symbolically coordinate for Imamoğlu. In addition to each of the approximately 4,000 nationwide election boxes for the 1.7 million party members, the social democratic party said.

In the meantime, investigations have been initiated against numerous users of social media. 37 people were “caught”, the Turkish Interior Minister Ali Yerlikaya wrote to X. A total of 261 account holders were determined for “provocative contributions”, 62 of them abroad. The remaining people are still going on. In total, more than 18 million contributions on X have been published on the topic by the morning, according to the Interior Minister.

Social media continues to work to a limited extent in Turkey. The cyberrecht activist Yaman Akdeniz wrote on X in the morning, the bandwid throttling of the platforms. Since Wednesday, users and media have reported only partially and barely accessible portals.

The state media supervision RTÜK punished four Turkish channels for their reports on Imamoğlu with fines and partial suspensions of the program.

Note: This message has been updated.