People hold posters of Istanbul Mayor Ekrem İmamoğlu as they protest outside the Vatan Security Department, where İmamoğlu was taken following his arrest in Istanbul, Türkiye, March 19, 2025. © 2025 AP Photo/Francisco Seco

The Istanbul Chief Public Prosecutor’s Office said it ordered İmamoglu and others detained in the scope of two separate criminal investigations against him. The move came just days before March 23, when he is set to be nominated by the Republican People’s Party (Cumhuriyet Halk Partisi, CHP), Türkiye’s main opposition party, to run against President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan in a presidential election in the next three years.

“Ekrem İmamoğlu and others detained should be released from police custody immediately,” said Hugh Williamson, Europe and Central Asia director at Human Rights Watch. “The Erdoğan presidency should ensure that the results of the Istanbul municipal elections are respected and that the criminal justice system is not weaponized for political ends.”

The Istanbul prosecutor’s office has engaged in a string of politically motivated investigations and detentions over the past five months against municipalities governed by the Republican People’s Party. The two latest investigations against İmamoglu, one concerning alleged links to terrorism and the other alleged corruption, fit that pattern.

Those detained on March 19 included the mayors of two Istanbul districts, Şişli and Beylikdüzü.

Prosecutors have initiated a total of five criminal cases against İmamoğlu, all based on scant evidence of any criminal activity. On March 18, Istanbul University stripped him of his university diploma. Legal experts in Türkiye widely condemned the move as an abuse of the university’s authority in an effort to prevent him from being eligible to run for the presidency.

On the day of the detentions, the Istanbul governor’s office banned public assemblies and demonstrations in Istanbul between March 19 and 23. Internet users in Istanbul experienced bandwidth reduction on the internet (internet throttling), restricting access to social media and news sites.

Before the detentions on March 19, three district mayors and many municipal council members from the Republican People’s Party had already been placed in pretrial detention as a result of the Istanbul chief prosecutor’s dubious investigations into terrorism links and corruption.

The move to accuse the Republican People’s Party of terrorism links with the armed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) began with the October 30, 2024 arrest and removal of Ahmet Özer, a 65-year-old university professor who is the mayor of the Esenyurt district of Istanbul. On the same day, a court ordered his pretrial detention on allegations of “membership” of the PKK, and the authorities removed him from office, appointing the Istanbul deputy governor in his place.

On February 13, 10 of the party’s elected council members were detained on charges of “membership of the PKK.” All had been elected to municipal positions as part of a political strategy by the Republican People’s Party and the pro-Kurdish rights Peoples’ Equality and Democracy Party (DEM) to cooperate in the local elections.

The prosecutor’s accusations in those investigations rest on the unsubstantiated premise that all of the politicians were operating under the instructions of the PKK or that they were working for an organ of the PKK under the guise of an opposition platform, the Peoples’ Democratic Congress, which encompasses Kurdish and leftist groups as well as civil society organizations. The platform, set up in 2011, has not been banned or closed down.

The authorities have also cited terrorism investigations and charges as the reason to replace elected mayors with government-appointed officials in 10 municipalities in southeastern Türkiye controlled by the DEM Party and two municipalities controlled by the Republican People’s Party, including Esenyurt.

Human Rights Watch (HRW)