Jailed Antalya Mayor Muhittin Böcek and his son have applied to benefit from a Turkish legal provision that can allow suspects to seek reduced sentences in exchange for cooperating with prosecutors, in a bribery and corruption investigation targeting the Antalya Metropolitan Municipality, the DHA news agency reported on Monday.
Muhittin Böcek, who in March 2024 was re-elected mayor of Antalya, a major Mediterranean city and tourism hub, was detained on July 5, 2025, as part of a bribery investigation, arrested the same day and later suspended from office.
A court issued another arrest order for him in April 2026 in a separate corruption case tied to a municipal infrastructure company, despite the fact that he was already in jail.
The probe has since expanded through several waves of detentions targeting municipal officials, businesspeople and members of Böcek’s family.
His son, Mustafa Gökhan Böcek, who was arrested in the same case after returning from Vienna in August, also gave a statement under “effective remorse” provisions.
Böcek and his son testified at the Antalya Courthouse as part of the investigation conducted by the Antalya Chief Public Prosecutor’s Office. Their questioning began on Sunday evening and continued until the early hours of Monday.
Their statements were taken in the presence of lawyers, with prosecutors asking questions about allegations, evidence and other matters in the case.
The provision known in Turkish law as “effective remorse” allows suspects or defendants to seek reduced sentences or other legal benefits if they provide information to authorities.
The mechanism has appeared in several recent investigations targeting CHP-run municipalities, with prosecutors citing statements from cooperating suspects among the grounds for new operations.
Gökhan Böcek alleged in his statement that CHP lawmaker Veli Ağbaba called him on the instruction of CHP leader Özgür Özel and requested 1 million euros ($1.16 million) for his father to be nominated again as mayor.
Muhittin Böcek was first elected mayor of Antalya in the 2019 local elections with 50.62 percent of the vote and was re-elected in 2024 with 48.71 percent.
Gökhan Böcek claimed he delivered the money to Ağbaba through an intermediary. In an earlier account reported by Turkish media, he said he handed the money to a person at CHP headquarters whom Ağbaba pointed out but whom he did not previously know.
He also alleged that $200,000 was delivered in a bag when Özel came to Antalya, with his father’s knowledge, and that 15 million lira was provided to the party during the Konyaaltı district mayoral election process.
“During the Kılıçdaroğlu period, support money would come to us from headquarters. In this last period, we gave money to headquarters,” Gökhan Böcek said, referring to former CHP leader Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu.
Muhittin Böcek said in his own statement that after remarks made by Özel during a meeting, he told his son to do what was necessary regarding requests for material and moral support from party headquarters for his candidacy and campaign work.
“My son Gökhan’s statement that 1 million euros was requested is true,” Muhittin Böcek said, according to Turkish media reports.
Ağbaba denied allegations made by Gökhan Böcek, calling them “slander that has nothing to do with reality.”
Justice Minister Akın Gürlek had previously claimed that Muhittin Böcek gave money to CHP leader Özgür Özel for his candidacy, an allegation Böcek denied.
There was no immediate public response from Özel to the latest allegations.
In the Antalya case, three suspects were released in September after cooperating with prosecutors, while further operations followed in October, November and April.
The Antalya operations are part of an ongoing crackdown on CHP-run municipalities that began in October 2024 and intensified after the March 2025 jailing of İstanbul Mayor Ekrem İmamoğlu, President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s main political rival.
Recent tallies in Turkish media say 23 CHP mayors have been jailed at some point since the March 31, 2024, local elections, 20 of whom remain in jail and 25 have been removed from office.
CHP officials say the cases are politically motivated and are being used to roll back the party’s strong gains in the 2024 local elections, when it finished first nationwide in a vote for the first time since 1977 and won many of Turkey’s biggest cities.
The government denies the investigations are politically motivated and says the judiciary acts independently.
The legal pressure has unfolded along with defections from the CHP to President Erdoğan’s ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP).
Afyonkarahisar Mayor Burcu Köksal recently said she would leave the CHP and join the AKP, with at least 14 mayors elected from the CHP joining the ruling party since the 2024 local elections.