Istanbul: Hundreds of thousands protest against imamoglu detention

In Istanbul, hundreds of thousands of people protest against the detention of the deposed mayor Ekrem Imamoglu at a rally. Following a call to his CHP party, they gathered in the Maltepe district, waved Turkey flags and demanded the release of the popular politician. The head of the largest opposition party, Özgur Özel, even spoke of more than two million participants at the rally.

Imamoglu is considered the most important challenge of state chief Recep Tayyip Erdogan in the presidential election planned for 2028 and was arrested on March 19 in connection with corruption and terrorist allegations, later arrested and discontinued for the first.

The 53-year-old is held in the Marmara high-security prison in Istanbul. Despite his arrest, he was nominated as a candidate for the Republican People’s Party (CHP) last week.

Imamoglu himself commented on Friday in a guest post from the “New York Times”. “Because he understood that he cannot hit me, the President of Turkey, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, reaches for others,” wrote the popular opposition politician in the US newspaper. With him Erdogan “arrested his most important political opponent”. Imamoglu added for the allegations against him – corruption, the management of a criminal network and support of the banned workers’ party Kurdistan (PKK) – there was no credible evidence.

Imamoglu was arrested because he opposed the “dictator”, said CHP chairman Özgür Özel to the crowd on Saturday. The place for resistance is the street.

“I’m not afraid, I only have a life, I am ready to give it to this country,” said an 82-year-old demonstrator, who did not want to give her name, the news agency AFP. Imamoglu is an “honest man, he is the one who will save the Turkish Republic,” she added.

Many demonstrators drove to the meeting place on the Bosphorus chartered by the CHP chartered ferries. They wore Turkish flags and portraits of the Republic and CHP founder Mustafa Kemal Ataturk.

“Taksim is everywhere, there is resistance everywhere,” the government opponents called for the government -critical mass protests on the place of the same name in Istanbul in 2013.

In addition to Imamoglu’s family, the peaceful demonstration on the eve of the Muslim sugar festival also took part in the families of the protests.

According to the Turkish Ministry of the Interior, almost 1,900 people have been arrested since the start of the protests, including several journalists. 260 people were arrested. In a first indictment, the Istanbul public prosecutor calls up to three years in prison for 74 of the demonstrators for participating in banned meetings, as the state broadcaster report reports.

Erdogan claims that the imprisonment of Imamoglu and several of his employees is part of an independent examination and accuses the CHP of wanting to cover up a nationwide corruption network. He threatened to uncover further corruption within the CHP and announced a tough approach to demonstrators.

The police are made on the part of the opposition. Interior Minister Ali Yerlikaya wrote on platform X that connections to twelve different terrorist organizations were found in the arrested. According to lawyers, most of the arrested are students.

Note: This article has been updated.