Turkish police on Friday detained the mayor of İstanbul’s Eyüpsultan district and 27 others in a corruption investigation, a day after 59 people, including three mayors, were taken into custody in operations targeting municipalities in the southern province of Mersin, the DHA news agency reported.
Eyüpsultan Mayor Mithat Bülent Özmen, a member of the Republican People’s Party (CHP), was among 28 suspects detained in an investigation overseen by the Ankara Chief Public Prosecutor’s Office.
Prosecutors accuse the suspects of offenses including membership in a criminal organization, bribery and bid-rigging. Police also searched locations linked to the suspects.
Özmen’s 2024 victory was politically significant in Eyüpsultan, a district closely associated with Turkey’s religious-conservative tradition because of the historic Eyüp Sultan Mosque and shrine.
The municipality had been run by parties from the Islamist-conservative political tradition for three decades: Ahmet Genç won for the Welfare Party in 1994, the Virtue Party in 1999 and the Justice and Development Party (AKP) in 2004, followed by successive AKP administrations until 2024.
Özmen won 48.17 percent of the vote in the March 2024 local elections, defeating AKP incumbent Deniz Köken, who received 41.45 percent, returning the municipality to the center-left for the first time since 1994.
Friday’s operation came a day after Mersin Mayor Vahap Seçer and 58 others were detained in investigations involving the Mersin Metropolitan Municipality and the Yenişehir and Mezitli district municipalities. Seçer, who also heads the Union of Municipalities of Turkey, was detained along with Yenişehir Mayor Abdullah Özyiğit and Mezitli Mayor Ahmet Serkan Tuncer. Tuncer was expelled from the CHP in September.
The back-to-back operations are the latest in a series of investigations targeting municipalities won by the CHP in the 2024 local elections. The pressure intensified after İstanbul Mayor Ekrem İmamoğlu, one of President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s most prominent political rivals, was jailed pending trial on corruption charges in March 2025.
By late August more than 30 mayors elected on CHP tickets were in jail, and some three dozen had been suspended from office, while several municipalities had passed to AKP control through trustee appointments, city council votes or defections.
The CHP says the investigations are politically motivated and designed to reverse its 2024 local election gains. The government denies political interference and says prosecutors and courts act independently.
The crackdown has continued despite a major split in the CHP this year. An Ankara court in May annulled the party’s 2023 congress, removed Özgür Özel and his leadership team and reinstated former chairman Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu. Özel then left the CHP with 90 lawmakers to establish the New Party, which became the largest opposition group in parliament.
Hundreds of former CHP lawmakers later quit the party to back Özel’s new movement, deepening the split while leaving many municipalities elected under Özel’s leadership, including Eyüpsultan, under the CHP banner.
This article is republished from Turkish Minute.
