The sudden detention of Istanbul’s popular mayor, Ekrem İmamoğlu, on fraud and “supporting terrorism” charges early Wednesday had one primary beneficiary: Turkey’s long-standing President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, bidding to extend his rule through a third decade.
Mr. İmamoğlu was arrested just days before he was to be formally named the main opposition candidate in Turkey’s next presidential election, in 2028. It caps a monthslong legal campaign against figures who could threaten the firm grip on power of Mr. Erdoğan and his Islamist-leaning Justice and Development Party (AKP).
The result of such a dramatic step is an even deeper slide toward authoritarian rule in Turkey, where an entire generation knows no other leader than Mr. Erdoğan – yet where his lock on politics is increasingly rejected by voters.
Why We Wrote This
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Turkey’s next presidential election is in three years, so why would the popular mayor of Istanbul, a rival of President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s, be arrested now? One indication: The increasingly autocratic Mr. Erdoğan fears a loosening hold on voters.
The move also jeopardizes Turkey’s warming ties with Europe, where its NATO membership has gained importance amid the war in Ukraine, as the United States under Donald Trump pivots toward Russia.
Mr. İmamoğlu’s Republican People’s Party – which last year delivered the AKP its first ballot box defeat during Mr. Erdoğan’s tenure, in nationwide municipal elections – on Wednesday decried the arrest as “a coup against our next president.”
On Wednesday and Thursday, thousands of protesters defied a four-day ban on marches in Istanbul, chanting, “Shoulder to shoulder against fascism.”
“This feels like [Turkey] transitioning into a new model … a different model of autocracy,” says Aslı Aydıntaşbaş, a visiting fellow and Turkey expert at the Brookings Institution in Washington.
“I think it is telling us that we are getting closer to what we see in Iran or Russia: not just a more illiberal and unfair playing field, but [where] there is a desire to control the opposition as well,” says Ms. Aydıntaşbaş.
“The effort to disqualify him is effectively putting him behind bars – and that is a tougher model of autocracy than what Turkey is used to,” she says. “This is also a sign of desperation, almost a tacit recognition [by Mr. Erdoğan] that you may not be able to prevail in an electoral landscape if you don’t eliminate your rivals.”
Erdoğan’s creeping authoritarianism
Mr. Erdoğan and his AKP have ruled Turkey with a creeping authoritarianism that has seen surges of antidemocratic actions. Among them were a crackdown after 2013 Gezi Park protests, and the aftermath of a 2016 coup attempt that witnessed the arrests of tens of thousands of people – military officers and civilians alike – in a broad purge of state institutions.
Constitutionally, Mr. Erdoğan can’t run for another term as president. But allies have suggested that the constitution may be amended to extend his rule – though that would require a supermajority, and buy-in from smaller parties – or that elections could be called early, which would give Mr. Erdoğan a chance to run again.
Justice Minister Yılmaz Tunç said the judiciary had acted independently when it detained Mr. İmamoğlu, and that suggestions of a “coup” were “extremely dangerous.”
That didn’t wash with one Istanbul protester.
“I think these are all political decisions, and I am sure that a large part of the country thinks so,” the man told the BBC. “There is no justice. There is no law. … There is no other explanation for this.”
Mr. İmamoğlu was first elected Istanbul mayor in a landslide in 2019 – delivering a blow to Mr. Erdoğan, whose own path to the presidency was launched when he was Istanbul mayor.
Mr. Erdoğan, too, was arrested and jailed while in office in 1999 – charged with incitement to violence and religious hatred by reading an Islamist poem at a political rally that called mosques “our barracks … the minarets our bayonets and the faithful our soldiers.”
Today the detention of the president’s main rival – who enjoys demonstrable, widespread support across different swaths of Turkish society – means Turkey “stepped onto a new terrain on this day,” wrote Soner Çağaptay, director of the Turkish Research Program at The Washington Institute for Near East Policy, on the social platform X.
“In 1999, Turkey’s political system created its anti-hero, by jailing then Istanbul mayor Erdoğan (on sham charges). He entered prison as a mayor, but left it as a political star,” wrote Mr. Çağaptay. “Arresting İmamoğlu will have the same effect on his brand – catapulting him to political stardom.”
Yet today’s Turkey is “a different country, having experienced state capture under Erdoğan,” he wrote, so efforts in the public sphere to cast Mr. İmamoğlu as the representative of the “common voter persecuted by elites” may be limited, “and this is what Erdoğan is betting on.”
Mr. Erdoğan has dominated Turkish politics for nearly a quarter century, as prime minister and president, and has worked assiduously to ensure unimpeded longevity for his rule. He expanded his authority in 2017 by pushing through a controversial national referendum creating an all-powerful executive presidency.
“He is God. Now he will officially be God,” a Turkish construction manager called Salim told the Monitor on the eve of that referendum.
“A dangerous direction”
But never before has Mr. Erdoğan sought to remove the popular leader of the opposition Republican People’s Party, founded by the revered Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, who forged the modern Turkish state from the ashes of the Ottoman Empire in 1923.
“Despite its flaws and democratic backsliding, Turkey did have competitive electoral politics, and we have seen the opposition be able to gain secular strongholds” and eventually big cities, as well as local elections last year across the country, says Ms. Aydıntaşbaş at Brookings. “That felt like a dangerous direction to the current ruling elite.”
Indeed, no stone appears to have been left unturned in the bid to stop Mr. İmamoğlu.
The day before the two-term mayor’s detention, for example, Istanbul University declared it had stripped him of his early 1990s degree due to irregularities – technically rendering Mr. İmamoğlu ineligible to run for president.
“It is clear that he is going to face a number of charges, from fraud to terrorism. And the fact that prosecutors have gone this far means that they have a green light to go this far, and I don’t see anything but him being put behind bars,” says Ms. Aydıntaşbaş.
Mr. İmamoğlu himself was calm in a video he posted on social media, as he put on a blue-purple tie in his dressing room at home, while he said “hundreds” of police waited outside.
“We are facing intimidation, but I want you to know that I won’t be intimidated,” he said. “I will continue to fight that person, who uses the state process like it is his own apparatus.”
