Turkish police on Thursday detained two district mayors from the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP) in the western province of İzmir as part of a bribery investigation, the latest in a series of operations targeting opposition-run municipalities after the party’s 2024 local election victory, Turkish Minute reported.
Seferihisar Mayor İsmail Yetişkin and Balçova Mayor Onur Yiğit were among 24 people detained in operations carried out under the coordination of the Seferihisar Chief Public Prosecutor’s Office, the Anka news agency reported.
Authorities had issued detention warrants for 26 suspects, including municipal employees and businesspeople, as part of an investigation into alleged funds transfers before the March 31, 2024, local elections that prosecutors said could be considered bribery.
Some municipal officials and contractors are accused of giving and receiving bribes, both in cash and through bank transfers, as part of alleged irregularities in construction and zoning procedures, Anka said.
Çağatay Güç, the CHP’s İzmir provincial chairman, criticized the operation as politically motivated and said the repeated targeting of municipalities showed that the process was not being conducted fairly.
“This is no longer about justice or a legal system. This is political pressure,” Güç told the Cumhuriyet daily, adding that the pressure would not weaken public support for the CHP.
The detentions came as the CHP is already under pressure from a series of municipal probes and defections to President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP).
Defections add to pressure on CHP
The main opposition party has faced a growing number of defections since its sweeping victory in the March 2024 local elections, when it finished ahead of the AKP nationwide for the first time in decades and won control of major cities and districts.
Three mayors, two of whom are CHP members, joined the AKP on Thursday: Mehmet Özcan, mayor of Keşan in Edirne province, who resigned from the CHP on Wednesday; Mesut Özarslan, mayor of Keçiören in Ankara, who also left the CHP in February; and Nevşehir Mayor Rasim Arı, who was elected from the İYİ (Good) Party in the 2024 local elections after leaving the AKP in 2021.
The three attended the AKP’s expanded provincial chairs’ meeting at party headquarters, where Erdoğan pinned party badges on Arı, Özarslan and Özcan.
Earlier this week, Erdoğan pinned an AKP badge on İstanbul lawmaker Nimet Özdemir, who recently resigned from the CHP. Özdemir had entered parliament from the nationalist opposition İYİ Party list before joining the CHP roughly two years ago.
Since the 2024 local elections, at least 17 mayors elected from the CHP — one metropolitan mayor, one provincial mayor, 13 district mayors and two town mayors — have switched to the AKP, according to Turkish media reports.
The defections have coincided with repeated police operations and investigations targeting CHP-run municipalities, particularly in İstanbul and other opposition-controlled districts, since October 2024.
The most high-profile case involves İstanbul Mayor Ekrem İmamoğlu, the CHP’s declared presidential candidate and widely seen as Erdoğan’s strongest potential rival.
İmamoğlu has been imprisoned since March 2025, when his arrest sparked Turkey’s largest street protests since the 2013 Gezi Park demonstrations.
More than 40 mayors have been arrested, removed from office or replaced by government-appointed trustees since the March 2024 local elections, according to a tally from BBC Turkish on Thursday.
The municipalities affected include 34 run by the CHP, 10 by the pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Equality and Democracy Party (DEM Party) and one by the AKP.
The CHP is also facing an internal leadership crisis after a court decision on May 21 annulled the party’s 2023 congress, removed Özgür Özel and the current leadership and reinstated former chairman Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu and his team.
The ruling intensified a power struggle inside Turkey’s oldest political party at a time when the CHP is confronting both judicial pressure and defections.
Critics and rights groups describe the developments as part of a broader effort to weaken the main opposition, while the government claims the judiciary acts independently.
