Turkey’s Erdoğan tries to sink popular rival in flood of court battles

Istanbul Mayor Ekrem İmamoğlu can be forgiven for losing count of the dozens of often bewildering court cases and investigations that the authorities have leveled against him.

That’s the price you pay when you emerge as the main rival to Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.

İmamoğlu, a charismatic 53-year-old secularist and one of Turkey’s most popular politicians, is expected to become the opposition’s presidential challenger this month at a meeting of his Republican People’s Party (CHP) on March 23.

İmamoğlu has won three fiercely fought contests for Turkey’s biggest city — and, significantly, the CHP last year managed to flip several traditional districts of Istanbul that Erdoğan viewed as reliable bastions for his Islamist AK Party.

Given those successes, it’s little wonder that Erdoğan’s authorities have conjured up a dizzying array of legal proceedings to slow İmamoğlu down, or — in the extreme scenario — jail him. He is due before a prosecutor for one of the cases this week.

Istanbul is particularly sensitive territory for the Islamist government because Erdoğan himself also used his mayorship of the megacity as a springboard to secure power in a NATO heavyweight country of 85 million people.

İmamoğlu’s lawyer Mehmet Pehlivan described “a broad legal offensive against [the mayor’s] political activities.” He told POLITICO that since İmamoğlu became mayor six years ago, 42 administrative and 51 judicial investigations had been opened against him and his office. 

İmamoğlu himself says the president is seeking to jail him for up to 25 years. 

The cases range from the serious to the downright surreal. One of the allegations is that he kicked the tomb of Sultan Mehmed the Conqueror, who captured what was then Constantinople from the Byzantines more than half a millennium ago. Another is that minibuses procured by his administration were not suitable for the streets of the biggest island in the Sea of Marmara off Istanbul.

At the more serious end, the state has leapt on his criticism of a top prosecutor to suggest he was threatening an official engaged in “fighting terrorism.” That trial is set to begin next month at Istanbul’s ominously named 14th Heavy Penal Court.

Of the judicial investigations, which cover allegations such as threats, misconduct in office, tender-rigging, and bribery, 29 have so far been closed. Five are at the trial stage.

Soli Özel at the Institute for Human Sciences in Vienna said the flurry of legal activity reflects the growing sway of Istanbul’s mayor.

“Today, İmamoğlu is the biggest threat to Erdoğan’s government or his chances of being reelected,” he said. “The cases filed by the judiciary, one after the other when deemed necessary, are to eliminate this threat.”

A presidential election is only due by 2028, but the AK Party is on the back foot after a poor performance in provincial elections last year. Erdoğan, aged 71, has said he won’t be standing again — but Turks take his repeated assertions of a withdrawal from politics with a pinch of salt.

Fully committed to the lawfare offensive, Erdoğan himself has accused the CHP of theft, corruption and irregularities, alleging that the non-AK media is whitewashing the opposition. 

The AK Party did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Diploma dispute

With the CHP on course to nominate İmamoğlu as the party’s presidential candidate March 23, all eyes are on his appearance before a prosecutor this week.

That session is supposed to provide evidence about his 1994 university diploma and whether it was forged. The timing may well not be coincidental, as the diploma is part of the paperwork for a presidential bid. Istanbul’s chief prosecutor’s office launched the probe on Feb. 22 following a report by Turkey’s higher education council that looked into his transfer from one university to another.

İmamoğlu’s supporters say the document is not faked. “The government’s tactic is clear,” said Turan Taşkın Özer, a CHP member of parliament for Istanbul. “By exerting pressure on the judiciary, they are launching unimaginable lawsuits. At times, legal principles are completely overturned.” 

The Istanbul mayor already has one prison sentence hanging over his head. In 2022, a judge ruled he should spend two years and seven months in jail for insulting the electoral authorities who canceled the 2019 vote in which he first won the Istanbul mayorship. (The word he used was “fools”; he went on to win both the rerun and reelection.)

Since the case is under appeal, İmamoğlu is still at liberty — but his lawyer Pehlivan described it as an attempt to prevent him from running in future elections.

Curiously, the more recent debate about İmamoğlu’s diploma echoes earlier controversy about whether Erdoğan himself had the necessary university degree to qualify as a presidential candidate. (The Turkish constitution specifies that the president must be over 40 and have completed higher education.)

But Murat Yetkin, the founder of YetkinReport, an independent news outlet, argued that Erdoğan perceives the Istanbul mayor as a threat precisely because he is his exact opposite.

“In almost all of the cases filed, there is a request for a prison sentence long enough to impose a ban” on the politician running for office, Yetkin said. “So this risk is real.” 

He added that the CHP’s other main prospective presidential candidate, Mansur Yavaş — the relatively low-key Ankara mayor — might well face similar legal challenges. 

“We are fighting against a despotic system that views eliminating political opponents by any means necessary as a legitimate approach,” said Özer, the Istanbul member of parliament.

He noted that the CHP mayor of Esenyurt, Istanbul’s most-populous district, has been arrested; as has the mayor of Beşiktaş, the city’s richest municipality. A third CHP mayor of an Istanbul district is in custody.

The opposition remains defiant.

“We are not the kind of people who take positions or step back in response to threats,” Özer said. 

“We will continue to say, ‘Bring it on!’”