Turkish prosecutors have launched an investigation into a social media account that shares statements from jailed İstanbul Mayor Ekrem İmamoğlu, the main opposition Republican People’s Party’s (CHP) presidential candidate, Turkish Minute reported.
The İstanbul Chief Public Prosecutor’s Office announced on Wednesday that it had opened an investigation into the X account “@CAOIletisim,” which belongs to the “Presidential Candidate Office” and publishes messages and statements attributed to İmamoğlu.
Since his arrest in March 2025 on corruption charges widely seen by critics as politically motivated, İmamoğlu has been communicating with the public through official campaign accounts run by his lawyers after his personal X account was blocked in Turkey in April 2025 on the grounds of “national security” and “public order.” His international X account was also restricted in May.
The campaign account, which has faced repeated blocking orders on similar grounds, is now under criminal investigation and was blocked again on Thursday. However, the X platform has not yet made the account, which has 209,000 followers, inaccessible from Turkey.
According to the prosecutor’s office, the investigation concerns allegations of “insulting the president” and “publicly disseminating misleading information,” an offense defined under Article 217 of the Turkish Penal Code.
The investigation comes as the trial of the jailed mayor began in İstanbul this week.
The nearly 4,000-page indictment accuses İmamoğlu of running what prosecutors call a “criminal organization” within the municipality and committing 142 offenses including bribery, fraud, bid rigging and money laundering. İmamoğlu has denied the accusations, calling the indictment “a pile of lies built through threats and coercion.”
The indictment names İmamoğlu and 401 other defendants, with prosecutors seeking a sentence of up to 2,430 years in prison for him. The charges have been widely criticized as politically motivated.
His arrest, generally seen as targeting the biggest political rival to longtime President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan in the 2028 presidential election, sparked Turkey’s worst protests in the last decade.
The latest investigation attracted criticism from the CHP.
CHP Deputy Chair Burhanettin Bulut said the probe was intended to intimidate the opposition.
“The İstanbul Chief Public Prosecutor’s Office has launched an investigation into the Presidential Candidate Office account on the pretext of ‘insulting the president’ and ‘publicly disseminating misleading information,’” Bulut said in a statement shared on social media.
He accused the government of deliberately conflating criticism with insult and journalism with disinformation.
“The aim of this mentality, which deliberately mixes criticism with insult and news with disinformation, is to intimidate the opposition and create a climate of fear in society,” Bulut said.
“In a democratic country, no one who exercises public power is exempt from criticism. The law should not be a tool to silence dissenting voices but a guarantee of justice and freedom of expression.”
İmamoğlu won İstanbul’s mayoral race in 2019 and defeated Erdoğan’s Justice and Development Party (AKP) again after the results of the first election were cancelled on the grounds of irregularities.
He was named his party’s presidential candidate in March for the next general election scheduled for 2028. But his political future has been clouded by court cases and legal rulings that could bar him from politics and that his party and supporters say are designed to sideline him.
