Turkish courts on Saturday jailed 11 people among the 59 detained this week in operations targeting municipalities run by the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), in an ongoing crackdown on CHP-controlled municipalities, Turkish Minute reported.
The tally is based on reported detentions in İstanbul’s Üsküdar district, the Yenişehir district in the southern province of Mersin, the northwestern province of Bolu and Bornova, a district of the western city of İzmir.
The largest number of detentions were in Yenişehir, a CHP-run district in Mersin, where 31 people, including deputy mayors, department heads and company officials, were taken into custody in an investigation focused on alleged bribery and tender irregularities. As of the latest reporting, their transfer to court and any formal arrest decisions had not yet been publicly confirmed.
In Üsküdar, an opposition-run district on İstanbul’s Asian side, 21 suspects were detained in a probe into alleged irregularities in building and occupancy permits. A judge later ordered the arrest of nine, including Deputy Mayor Filiz Deveci and municipal company executive Nazım Akkoyunlu, while 10 were released under judicial supervision.
In Bolu authorities detained Deputy Mayor Leyla Beykoz and city council member Aydan Özdemir in an investigation that had already sent Mayor Tanju Özcan to jail in an earlier phase of the case. Beykoz and Özdemir were arrested by a court. Özcan and Ali Sarıyıldız were also arrested on a fraud charge, but both men were already in prison.
In Bornova, a CHP-run district of İzmir, four people, including Mayor Ömer Eşki, were detained in a separate investigation. All four were later sent to court with a request for arrest but were released under judicial supervision, and a later objection to their release by prosecutors was rejected.
The CHP made major gains in the March 2024 local elections, taking control of key municipalities across the country. Since October 2024 prosecutors have opened a series of corruption and misconduct investigations into CHP-run municipalities, in what the party says is an effort to weaken the opposition force that won a nationwide plurality in those elections.
In March 2025 İstanbul Mayor Ekrem İmamoğlu, the party’s top potential challenger to President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, was also arrested as part of the same crackdown and remains in jail. The main court case accusing him of corruption began last month and is ongoing.
