Turkey’s interior minister has applauded the conviction of İstanbul Mayor Ekrem İmamoğlu on insult charges, saying he will suspend İmamoğlu if a higher court upholds the verdict, which includes a prison sentence and a political ban, Deutsche Welle Turkish edition reported.
An İstanbul court on Wednesday sentenced İmamoğlu, from the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP) and a key opponent of President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, to two years, seven months in prison and barred him from politics for allegedly insulting members of Turkey’s Supreme Election Board (YSK).
The sentence and the political ban must be upheld by an appeals court after a petition is filed.
Interior Minister Süleyman Soylu said in televised remarks on Monday that the court’s decision on İmamoğlu was correct from a legal point of view and that the law applies to everyone in a state of law.
Soylu said as interior minister he has the authority to suspend İmamoğlu if his conviction is upheld, adding, however, that he does not have the authority to remove him from office because his case is not terrorism-related.
Following the local elections of 2019, the Interior Ministry removed dozens of Kurdish mayors in the country’s Southeast and replaced them with government-appointed trustees on the grounds that the mayors had links to the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), listed as a terrorist organization by Turkey and much of the international community.
İmamoğlu’s conviction attracted widespread condemnation from within and without Turkey with high-level officials in Europe and the US, including the mayors of major European cities, harshly criticizing the verdict and expressing solidarity with İmamoğlu.
Considering that the verdict could see İmamoğlu ousted from office and prevented from running in the 2023 presidential election, opposition parties argue that the mayor’s prosecution and trial were an attempt to eliminate a key opponent to Erdoğan, under whose increasingly authoritarian rule they question the independence of the judiciary.
If the verdict is upheld by the top appeals court after İmamoğlu is certified as a presidential candidate, he would still be able to run for president; however, his win would not be certified and there would be a rerun election, YSK chairman Muharrem Akkaya told the Habertürk news website.
İmamoğlu ended the years-long Justice and Development Party (AKP) rule in İstanbul when he defeated the AKP’s mayoral candidate twice in the local elections of 2019. He won the rerun election by a larger margin than the first, which had been canceled due to supposed irregularities.
The İstanbul mayor was tried for a speech in which he said those who annulled the initial 2019 vote were “fools.” However, İmamoğlu said at the first hearing in January that his remarks, which were in response to a question from a reporter, were not aimed at the YSK officials but at Interior Minister Soylu, who in an earlier statement used the same word against him.