İstanbul’s now-deposed mayor Ekrem İmamoğlu has become the latest Turkish politician or activist opposed to President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan to fall afoul of the judicial authorities in what campaigners see as an intensifying pattern of repression.
Widely seen as the only politician who could defeat Erdoğan at the ballot box, İmamoğlu has been jailed on corruption charges he vehemently denies and is also being investigated in a terrorism probe.
His arrest has sparked days of protests that have spread from Istanbul across the country in Turkey’s worst unrest in over a decade.
US-based Human Rights Watch said Monday that İmamoğlu’s arrest was the latest example of a judicial system “weaponized to remove a leading opposition politician from the political scene,” adding that the Erdoğan administration “has a well-established track record of incarcerating people for political purposes.”
Here is a list of the main political figures behind bars in Turkey:
Osman Kavala
A leading critic of Erdoğan, 67-year-old philanthropist and activist Osman Kavala has been in prison since he was arrested in 2017.
He is serving life without parole after being convicted of attempting to overthrow the government and financing the 2013 İstanbul Gezi Park protests.
Initially sparked by plans to raze an İstanbul park, the demonstrations morphed into a wider protest movement that spread across the country, rocking Erdoğan’s government when he was prime minister.
In 2019, the Strasbourg-based European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) said the arrest of the Paris-born businessman sought to silence him and deter other human rights defenders.
The violations in the case “pursued an ulterior purpose … namely that of reducing Mr Kavala, and with him all human rights defenders, to silence,” the ECtHR ruled.
However, Turkey, which as a Council of Europe member is obliged to implement ECtHR rulings, refused to release him.
An appeals court upheld his conviction in 2022, along with the 18-year sentences handed down to seven other defendants, including urban planner Tayfun Kahraman, a top former official at Istanbul City Hall.
Selahattin Demirtaş
OZAN KOSE / AFP
Selahattin Demirtaş, 51, former presidential candidate and figurehead of Turkey’s then-main pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP), was arrested in 2016 with the country still in the throes of a crackdown in the wake of a failed coup against Erdoğan.
In jail ever since, he was sentenced last year to 42 years for his alleged role in a series of deadly protests that erupted in 2014.
Until the rise of İmamoğlu, Demirtaş was seen as the only politician in Turkey who could rival Erdoğan’s rhetorical skills and was known to some admirers as “Kürt Obama” (Kurdish Obama) after the then-US president.
There had been some speculation in recent months that Demirtaş could be released as Erdoğan seeks to restore peace to the Kurdish-dominated southeast but this has yet to materialize.
As in Kavala’s case, Turkey ignored an ECtHR ruling ordered his release. His detention was aimed at “stifling pluralism and limiting freedom of political debate,” the court ruled in 2018.
İmamoğlu allies
The mayors of two İstanbul districts, Şişli district mayor Resul Emrah Şahan and Beylikdüzü mayor Mehmet Murat Çalık, have both been arrested in the same case against İmamoğlu and ousted from their positions.
Also jailed is Mahir Polat, a key aide to İmamoğlu and an expert in cultural heritage, who had been leading the mayor’s cultural and architectural projects in the city.
Journalists, academics, a judge
Erdoğan’s critics are fighting a years-long crackdown on freedom of expression and media independence in Turkey.
The offense of “insulting the president” was frequently used during Erdoğan’s last term in office to muffle dissident voices.
Media watchdog Reporters Without Borders (RSF) ranks Turkey in 158th place out of 180 countries in its press freedom table.
Dozens have fled abroad, including Can Dündar, the former chief editor of the Cumhuriyet daily, convicted in absentia to more than 27 years in prison in 2020 for a report on Turkish weapons deliveries to armed jihadist groups in Syria.
More than a thousand university academics were also targeted in the purge of institutions that followed the 2016 coup attempt.
One was former UN court judge Aydın Sefa Akay, a former Turkish diplomat, who was jailed on charges of links to the coup.
© Agence France-Presse