The leader of the main opposition party in Turkey, Özgür Özel, visited on Tuesday the until recently mayor of Istanbul, Ekrem İmamoğlu, in the Silivri prison, after he was sent to prison on Sunday pending trial after being arrested for several serious corruption offences, promising to continue the ‘resistance’ against what he again described as a ‘civil coup’.
‘This is the 7th day of the failed coup attempt. Turkey is resisting, millions of people continue to stand up against this coup attempt,’ Özel said in a speech to members of his party, ’thanking all the residents of Istanbul for thwarting the coup and supporting democracy.’
After his visit to Silivri prison, located on the outskirts of Istanbul, where, in addition to İmamoğlu, two other CHP mayors – Resul Emre Şahan, mayor of Şişli, and Murat Çalık, mayor of Beylikdüzü – are being held, as well as other municipal employees charged by the prosecution in the investigation, Özel addressed journalists, assuring them that ’the winds of the democratic revolution are behind Ekrem and our friends‘.
‘The democratic revolution has trampled on the undemocratic order of Mr Tayyip (Erdoğan). The palace regime has been crushed under the stick of that old lady… This palace regime has been condemned and has shamed its own voters’, said the opposition leader, quoted by Turkish news agencies, after a visit lasting some 3 hours in which Özel also visited Tayfun Kahraman, sentenced in 2022 to 18 years in prison for the protests in Gezi Park.
In his statements, Özel once again insisted that the investigation opened against İmamoğlu and other mayors from the CHP party is politically motivated and has been instigated by the government: ‘They have realised that they will not be able to win any elections while the CHP controls the municipalities. That is why they have pressed the button,’ he told reporters.
Criticism of insults against Erdoğan
The protests over the arrest of the mayor of Istanbul, which have already left more than a thousand people detained and more than a hundred police officers injured, continued last night around the building of the metropolitan town hall in the central district of Saraçhane, where a group of demonstrators chanted insults against Erdoğan, his late mother and his family, carrying banners with similar insults. Forty-three people who were identified by the police as the authors of these slogans were arrested, according to the Ministry of the Interior, which condemned these insults, as did prominent members of the government.
But the main opposition party has also issued criticism and condemnation of these comments insulting the Turkish president and his family; İmamoğlu himself, from prison, in a statement issued through his lawyers, denounced these practices saying: ‘I cannot tolerate insults against mothers. I wholeheartedly condemn the statements made against the late mother of the President’, said the until recently mayor of Istanbul, who called for legal action to be taken against those who made these statements.
The CHP leader, Özgür Özel, also criticised these types of attacks against the Turkish president – who last night visited a café in Ankara and chatted casually with several families and young people – and warned that actions like these only serve to deslegitimice the protests against the government. ‘Using profanity, especially against someone’s family or mother, is absolutely unacceptable. I take such insults as if they were directed against my own mother,’ Özel wrote on his X social network profile. ‘Our political struggle and our opposition are carried out with decency and dignity. Anyone who hurls insults at a politician’s family, is not one of us,’ he stressed.
The main opposition party plans to meet this week under Özel’s chairmanship in an assembly meeting to analyse the latest developments – including the arrest of the mayor of Istanbul – and the next steps to take. Ekrem İmamoğlu is expected to be announced at the meeting as the CHP candidate for the Presidency of Turkey in the next presidential elections, after receiving 14.8 million votes nationwide in the primaries that the party held on Sunday – in which İmamoğlu was the only candidate – despite the fact that, recently, Istanbul University withdrew the university degree that, according to the Constitution, he needs to be a candidate.
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Edited and reviewed by:
Pablo Gómez is a specialist in Turkey and has been editor-in-chief of Hispanatolia since 2011. He has been analysing current affairs and geopolitics in Turkey and the surrounding region since 2006.
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