Turkish police detained at least 15 employees of the Antalya Metropolitan Municipality on Wednesday as part of an expanding corruption investigation that has already led to the arrest and suspension of the city’s opposition mayor, in a broader legal campaign targeting municipalities run by the country’s main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP).
According to the Euronews Turkish service, the detentions targeted staff at the Antalya Water and Wastewater Administration and an infrastructure company owned by the municipality.
Antalya prosecutors say the case involves alleged kickbacks connected to public tenders and election-period financing, with suspected bribes totaling about 195 million Turkish lira ($6 million), according to figures cited in the investigation file.
Authorities allege the money was moved outside the banking system through currency-exchange offices and gold dealers and then delivered in cash or converted into precious metals to avoid financial tracking, according to the indictment.
The investigation first drew national attention in July 2025, when Antalya Mayor Muhittin Böcek was taken into custody and later arrested on corruption charges before being suspended from office by Turkey’s Interior Ministry on July 6.
Prosecutors allege that some of the payments were tied to efforts to finance Böcek’s re-election campaign in the 2024 local polls, including claims that a businessman paid millions of lira for advertising services and a residential property connected to the mayor’s family.
The case file cites bank records, financial crime reports and phone data that investigators say show repeated contacts between key suspects in the months leading up to the vote.
Over the following months, several senior officials and businesspeople were detained in successive phases of the investigation. On August 12 police took 17 people into custody in simultaneous raids, eight of whom were later jailed. On September 10 another 21 suspects were detained, with three subsequently released after cooperating under Turkey’s “effective remorse” provisions. On October 14 police detained six more suspects, three of whom were arrested, and in November police detained eight more people.
The case is part of a broader crackdown on the CHP that has intensified since the party’s sweeping victory in the March 2024 local elections, when it again won İstanbul, Ankara and other major cities and secured the largest share of the national vote for the first time in decades.
The CHP described the probes and operations as part of a year-long government campaign targeting its municipalities and mayors in a report titled “Judiciary Against the Ballot Box: The Anatomy of a Coup,” released in late October.
According to the report 16 CHP mayors are currently jailed, while trustees have been appointed to 13 municipalities across the country. The report documented mass arrests, politically motivated prosecutions and the seizure of opposition-run municipalities following the 2024 elections. It also noted a surge in corruption and terrorism-related investigations into CHP officials since the arrest of İstanbul Mayor Ekrem İmamoğlu in March 2025, calling his case “the most visible example of political pressure on the opposition.”
The CHP argued that the government has increasingly relied on the judiciary “as a political weapon” to roll back opposition gains at the ballot box. Citing hundreds of arrests in nine operations targeting the İstanbul Metropolitan Municipality between March and August 2025, the party said the crackdown violates constitutional guarantees of local autonomy and the presumption of innocence.
Opposition figures and rights groups also contend that the probes are being used to intimidate opposition-led municipalities and overturn election results unfavorable to the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP).
