The massive protests in Turkey show no signs of dying down a week after the arrest of the main opposition leader, Ekrem İmamoğlu.
Anti-government demonstrations have been a daily occurrence in Turkey’s largest cities.
Protesters took to the streets again on Wednesday night, and students marched in the capital, Ankara on Thursday morning, March 27th, only to be met by the police who used pepper spray, plastic pellets, and water cannons to disperse them.
Authorities have arrested more than 1,400 people so far in what have been labelled as the largest demonstrations against President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan for more than a decade.
The main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP) said their next major gathering is planned for Saturday.
The party’s contender for the presidential elections in 2028, Istanbul Mayor Ekrem İmamoğlu, was arrested last Wednesday on charges of corruption and links to the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), a group classified as a terrorist organisation by Turkey and its allies. He has been interrogated, jailed, and stripped of his mayoralty as a result of the investigation.
Justice Minister Yılmaz Tunç said on Thursday that the arrest was based on criminal reports and the gravity of allegations against him, and was not linked to the timing of the CHP’s selection of İmamoğlu on Sunday as its presidential candidate.
Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, who has ruled Turkey since 2003—first as prime minister and then as president—has called the protests a “provocation” by the opposition “to disturb the peace of the nation and polarise our people.”
But the opposition sees the arrest as an attempt by the government to get rid of its main political rival.
The evidence against İmamoğlu has not been officially disclosed. Many Turkish media outlets have reported that it is largely based on “secret witnesses.” The use of such testimony has been seen in previous criminal cases against opposition politicians.
CHP leader Özgür Özel said on Wednesday that the crackdown would only strengthen the protest movement. “Our numbers won’t decrease with the detentions and arrests. We will grow and grow!” he warned.
Istanbul’s opposition-run city council on Wednesday elected an interim mayor, Nuri Aslan, to prevent the government from appointing a trustee to run the city, as it has done in several other cities.
The CHP also plans to convene an extraordinary congress on April 6th to prevent authorities from appointing a trustee to run the party after prosecutors launched a probe into alleged irregularities around its last congress in 2023.
