Istanbul’s mayor in court for mass trial decried as politically motivated

Critics say sprawling corruption case against Ekrem İmamoğlu aims to stop him challenging Erdoğan

A mass trial of 400 people including the jailed mayor of Istanbul, Ekrem İmamoğlu, has opened in Turkey in a sprawling corruption case critics say is a politically motivated attempt to thwart his chances of challenging Recep Tayyip Erdoğan for the presidency.

İmamoğlu entered the courtroom in Istanbul to cheers and whistles from members of his opposition Republican People’s party (CHP), and there were reports that a group of lawyers chanted: “We want a fair trial.”

The first hearing was marked by a heated exchange between the judge and the jailed mayor, after other defendants were chosen to speak first. İmamoğlu repeatedly demanded to address the court but the judge refused, calling his request inappropriate.

“You cannot simply get up and come to the podium to request to speak,” the judge reportedly said. The 55-year-old mayor responded that the court should “respect the right of people to defend themselves”.

Hundreds of former and current employees of the Istanbul municipality are due to stand trial alongside İmamoğlu over the coming weeks as the trial continues, including more than 106 people already in jail. All stand accused of involvement in an alleged network of corruption and organised crime centred on İmamoğlu’s office.

İmamoğlu, the mayor of Turkey’s largest city, was arrested last year during a raid on his home, shortly after announcing his intention to run for president on behalf of the country’s largest opposition party, the CHP.

As all protests within a 1km radius of the courtroom have been banned, supporters gathered at a distance, waving images of İmamoğlu and more than a dozen other detained CHP mayors, according to an Agence France-Presse reporter.

After his election in 2019, İmamoğlu quickly rose to become Erdoğan’s nemesis, occupying a position the president once held and rising in political stature to challenge him on the national stage. After declaring his intention to run for president, Istanbul University annulled İmamoğlu’s diploma, a requirement to run for Turkey’s highest office.

His arrest sent shock waves through Turkish society, sparking nightly mass protests around the municipality building that contained his office where hundreds were detained. The CHP vowed to fight the arrest, holding a symbolic vote to name İmamoğlu as their candidate for president in an election expected to take place next year.

Prosecutors produced thousands of pages of indictments claiming that Imamoğlu’s corrupt activities dated back to 2014, years before he was elected mayor in an upset to Erdoğan’s ruling party. Late last year, the former Istanbul prosecutor Akın Gürlek said Imamoğlu’s corrupt network caused 160bn lira (£2.85bn) in losses to the Turkish state over a 10-year period. If convicted on all charges against him, the Istanbul mayor and presidential candidate faces a prison term of more than 1,900 years.

The head of the CHP, Özgür Özel, and İmamoğlu’s wife, Dilek, sat together in court as the trial began. “We are nervous and anxious,” Dilek İmamoğlu told reporters before the hearing started, according to Reuters. “We hope that they move to trial without detention.”

Observers and rights groups have described the trial as politically motivated, citing the use of secret witnesses as well as a sweeping effort to detain mayors belonging to opposition parties, particularly the CHP, across Turkey.

Human Rights Watch said the trial represented “the culmination a 17-month campaign by the Turkish authorities against the main opposition party through criminal investigations, detentions, and other lawsuits targeting İmamoğlu, other elected officials, and the party leadership, pointing to a concerted effort to remove İmamoğlu from politics and discredit his party in ways that undermine democracy”.

Since his arrest last year, İmamoğlu has been incarcerated in an infamous high-security prison near Istanbul as charges mounted against him. In addition to the charges concerning his university diploma and corruption, the jailed mayor was indicted on espionage charges last month, accused of leaking voter data to foreign countries.

“The trial of mayor Ekrem İmamoğlu follows more than a year of weaponizing the criminal justice system against his party and other CHP elected officials while he sits in jail,” said Benjamin Ward, deputy Europe and central Asia director at Human Rights Watch.

HRW noted that the broad investigations ensnaring leading figures within the CHP began after Gürlek was appointed as Istanbul’s public prosecutor. Last month, Gürlek was appointed justice minister in a cabinet reshuffle.