, paid a visit to the party’s İstanbul Mayor Ekrem İmamoğlu, recently jailed in a notorious İstanbul prison on Tuesday, as the country braced for more protests, the Anka news agency reported.){kind=link}
Özgür Özel, the leader of Turkey’s main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), paid a visit to the party’s İstanbul Mayor Ekrem İmamoğlu, recently jailed in a notorious İstanbul prison on Tuesday, as the country braced for more protests, the Anka news agency reported.
İmamoğlu, 53, is widely seen as the only politician capable of defeating Turkey’s longtime leader Recep Tayyip Erdoğan at the ballot box.
In just four days he went from being the mayor of İstanbul — a post that launched Erdoğan’s political rise decades earlier — to being detained, interrogated, jailed and stripped of his position as a result of corruption and terrorism investigations.
He was detained along with more than 80 others including local politicians, party officials and journalists on Wednesday of last week and was put in pretrial detention on Sunday at Marmara Prison, previously known as Silivri Prison, where most of Turkey’s political prisoners are jailed.
Özel, who arrived at the prison in a convoy on Tuesday, had a two-hour meeting with İmamoğlu. He also met with two other district mayors in İstanbul who along with İmamoğlu were arrested and removed from their posts.
The CHP leaders told reporters at the end of his visit that he was “ashamed on behalf of those who govern Turkey of the atmosphere I am in and the situation that Turkey is being put through.”
He described İmamoğlu and two jailed CHP district mayors as “three lions inside, standing tall, with their heads held high … proud of themselves, their families, their colleagues, not afraid.”
The mayors are facing accusations of terrorism or corruption.
Özel, who has been taking part in the protests against İmamoğlu’s arrest in front of İstanbul City Hall, announced that Tuesday evening would be his party’s final demonstration in the area.
The CHP leader, who appeared on CNN International on Monday, said the international media is closely following the developments in Turkey in the wake of İmamoğlu’s arrest and that this is something Erdoğan has caused.
“I did not do it, it is not an interest I created. This is the reaction of people against injustice and a scandal that Erdoğan has created,” he said.
Meanwhile, the İstanbul Chief Public Prosecutor’s Office asked the CHP party organizations in the city to take down the jailed mayor’s posters across the city, CHP İstanbul provincial chairman Özgür Çelik announced on X on Tuesday.
Çelik said his party would not comply with the prosecutor’s request and would hang more İmamoğlu posters at the party’s district offices.
Interior Minister Ali Yerlikaya updated an earlier figure of 1,133 and announced on X on Tuesday that a total of 1,418 people have been detained in “illegal demonstrations” held since March 19, the day of İmamoğlu’s detention.