(Istanbul, March 24, 2025) – The formal order by an Istanbul court to detain Istanbul Mayor Ekrem İmamoğlu is the latest example of the justice system weaponized to remove a leading opposition politician from the political scene, Human Rights Watch said today.
Mayor İmamoğlu’s detention, nominally based on a corruption investigation by the Istanbul Prosecutor’s Office, came on the morning of March 23, 2025, the day his Republican People’s Party (CHP) nominated him as their presidential candidate. The detention demonstrates how the presidency of the incumbent, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, exercises excessive influence over Türkiye’s prosecutors and courts.
“This is a dark time for democracy in Türkiye, with such a blatantly lawless move to weaponize the justice system to cancel the democratic process,” said Hugh Williamson, Europe and Central Asia director at Human Rights Watch. “Imamoğlu’s unjustified detention violates the rights of millions of Istanbul voters to their chosen representatives and spells a doubling down of the Erdoğan presidency against Türkiye’s political opposition, which goes far beyond the individuals involved.”
The court ordered the detention of İmamoğlu and the mayor of Istanbul’s Beylikdüzü district, a member of the same party, along with 43 others, pending the completion of the investigation into corruption, and released 41others under judicial controls. The court also ordered the detention of three others, among them the mayor of Istanbul’s Şişli district, in a separate investigation into terrorism links but rejected, for now, the prosecutor’s request to jail İmamoğlu in connection with that investigation. None of those detained have been charged with any offense.
The Prosecutor’s Office claimed to be investigating İmamoğlu with a view to bringing charges of “establishing and leading a criminal organization,” “bribe taking,” “illegal recording of personal data,” and “public tender bid rigging.” The alleged evidence against him includes vague statements by witnesses with protected identities.
The second investigation, for links with terrorism, is allegedly because the Republican People’s Party and the pro-Kurdish rights Peoples’ Equality and Democracy Party (DEM) forged an electoral alliance prior to the March 31 2023 local elections to support CHP candidates at the district level. The prosecutor alleges that this entirely lawful political strategy was ordered by the armed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK).
The Istanbul court said that there was no reason “at this moment” to detain İmamoğlu in the scope of this second terrorism investigation because he was already detained in connection with the corruption investigation. The court’s explicit indication that it could be open to detaining İmamoğlu a second time if he is released in connection with the corruption investigation is a disturbingly brazen acknowledgement of how detention orders can be weaponized to keep an individual incarcerated for political purposes, Human Rights Watch said.
The Erdoğan government has a well-established track record of incarcerating people for political purposes. The European Court of Human Rights has already found “beyond reasonable doubt” that Turkish authorities in the cases of a politician, Selahattin Demirtaş, and a human rights advocate, Osman Kavala, detained the individuals for “the ulterior purpose of stifling pluralism and limiting freedom of political debate” and “of reducing the applicant to silence” respectively. The European Court and the Council of Europe’s Committee of Ministers have called for the immediate release of both men, which the Turkish government refuses to do.
The Istanbul prosecutor also has four other ongoing prosecutions against İmamoğlu, all at different stages. In three of them, the prosecutor has requested the court to ban İmamoğlu from politics.
Şişli district Mayor Resul Emrah Şahan was detained for alleged terrorism links, and authorities have invoked articles of the Municipalities Law against him, which permit removing elected officials in such cases and replacing them with a government appointed “trustee.” In Şahan’s case, he was replaced by the Şişli district governor. Erdogan’s government has now used the tactic of replacing elected mayors facing baseless terrorism investigations and prosecutions with “trustees” in 13 cases since the 2023 local elections.
The second district mayor detained, the mayor of Beylikdüzü, is Mehmet Murat Çalık. Both İmamoğlu and Çalık will be replaced by members of the elected municipal council, chosen by the council members.
There have been mass protests in Istanbul and other cities around the country against the removal of Imamoglu. These protests have been overwhelmingly peaceful. There have been arrests and violent police dispersal in some cases using tear gas fired at the crowd, as well as water cannon, notably in Ankara against university students.