After İmamoğlu’s detention
Erdoğan has further opposition mayors arrested
Updated on July 5th, 2025 – 1:28 p.m.Reading time: 2 min.
In March, Erdoğan’s largest rival, the Mayor of Istanbul, was arrested. Now there are arrests again.
According to the largest opposition party Chp, three more of its mayors have been arrested in Turkey as part of investigations into allegations of corruption. It was the mayor of the southern city of Adana, the southern holiday city of Antalya and the southeastern city of Adiyaman, said the mayor of the capital Ankara, Mansur Yavas, on Saturday in the online service X.
It is the latest step in a number of investigations against politicians from the left -wing nationalist CHP. President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s government is increasingly putting pressure on the party, which had won a big victory against his Islamic-conservative AKP last year.
The approach to the popular mayor Ekrem İmamoğlu, which is considered the most important domestic rival Erdoğan, is particularly hard. İmamoğlu was arrested on March 19. Shortly thereafter, a court ordered custody of corruption allegations. İmamoğlu rejects the allegations. His arrest had triggered the largest wave of protest in Turkey since the so-called Gezi protests in 2013. Thousands of people were arrested.
Erdoğan repeatedly announced that there would be further steps against the CHP. He justifies this with alleged illegal machinations and recently called the party a “tool of local robbers”.
The mayors in Adana and Adiyaman are based on corruption investigations by the Istanbul public prosecutor, as part of which the mayors of the Istanbul districts of Besiktas and Esenyurt had already been arrested. The deputy mayor in the Istanbul district of Büyükcekmece was also arrested on Saturday.
For years, the Turkish judiciary has been criticized to act politically to act and to investigate investigations against opposition politicians politically.
