Turkish authorities arrested 18 people on Wednesday, including officials from İstanbul’s opposition-run municipality, more than a month after the city’s suspended mayor, Ekrem İmamoğlu, the main rival of President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, was jailed, Turkish Minute reported.
The arrestees include Cevat Kaya, the brother of İmamoğlu’s wife Dilek Kaya İmamoğlu, and Elçin Karaoğlu, director of planning at the municipality’s Bosporus department.
The İstanbul Criminal Court of Peace on duty also put four others under house arrest, including Şafak Başa, director of the İstanbul Water and Sewerage Administration, and Gözdem Ongun, wife of the jailed head of the municipality’s media company.
Another 26 people, including deputy director of the water utility Begüm Çelikdelen, were released under judicial supervision and prohibited from leaving the country.
In the court filing prosecutors referred to an “organized crime group formed under the leadership of Ekrem İmamoğlu,” marking the first time his name appeared directly in a formal claim of criminal conspiracy.
The charges include forming and leading a criminal organization, bid rigging, bribery and aggravated fraud.
The arrestees include senior municipal officials, deputy directors of the municipality’s culture company, the deputy mayor of the Bakırköy district, İmamoğlu’s bodyguard and the director of the municipality’s expropriation department.
The second wave of operations follows the April 26 detention of 52 people in simultaneous police operations across İstanbul, Ankara and Tekirdağ, carried out by the Financial Crimes Investigation Department.
Republican People’s Party Chair Özgür Özel condemned the timing of the operation during a rally Saturday in Mersin, calling it part of a broader effort to seize control of public resources in İstanbul and silence opposition to the Kanal İstanbul waterway project.
İmamoğlu, whose 2019 and 2024 election victories dealt Erdoğan a rare political defeat, was detained on March 19 following a retroactive annulment of his university diploma.
The İstanbul municipality had served as a symbolic and strategic center of opposition power since İmamoğlu’s historic victory over Erdoğan’s ruling party.
His party, the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), garnered a plurality of the nationwide vote after 47 years in last year’s local elections.
İmamoğlu was formally nominated as the CHP’s presidential candidate on March 23, the same day as his arrest.
His arrest triggered the largest nationwide protests in Turkey since the 2013 Gezi Park movement, with security forces responding with tear gas and water cannons.
Some 2,000 people were detained nationwide in the protests, hundreds of whom were arrested and jailed before recently being released.
Detained protesters alleged mistreatment and abuse in police custody. They are now facing trial due to their acts of protest.
International observers and rights organizations warn that Turkey is accelerating its slide from competitive authoritarianism into outright dictatorship.
The Turkish government maintains that the judiciary is independent and that the arrests are based on credible allegations of financial crimes.
