A mass trial of 400 people including the jailed mayor of Istanbul, Ekrem İmamoğlu, has opened in Turkey in a sprawling corruption case critics say is a politically motivated attempt to scupper his chances of challenging Recep Tayyip Erdoğan for the presidency.
Hundreds of former and current employees of the Istanbul municipality are due to give evidence, including more than 106 people already in jail. All stand accused of involvement in a broad network of corruption and organised crime centred on İmamoğlu’s office.
İmamoğlu, the mayor of Turkey’s largest city, was arrested last year during a raid on his home, shortly after announcing his intention to run for president on behalf of the country’s largest opposition party, the Republican People’s party (CHP).
Supporters gather near the courtroom on Monday. The poster, in Turkish, says ‘Ekrem İmamoğlu freedom’. Photograph: Dilara Acikgoz/AP
As all protests banned within a 1km radius of the courtroom have been banned, supporters gathered at a distance, waving images of İmamoğlu and more than a dozen other CHP detained mayors, according to an Agence France-Presse reporter.
After his election in 2019, İmamoğlu quickly rose to become Erdoğan’s nemesis, occupying a position the president once held and rising in political stature to challenge him on the national stage. After declaring his intention to run for president, Istanbul University annulled İmamoğlu’s diploma, a requirement to run for Turkey’s highest office.
His arrest sent shockwaves through Turkish society, sparking nightly mass protests around the municipality building that contained his office where hundreds were detained. The CHP vowed to fight the arrest, holding a symbolic vote to name İmamoğlu as their candidate for president in an election expected to take place next year.
Istanbul’s mayor, Ekrem İmamoğlu, pictured in 2024, was arrested after declaring his intention to run for president. Photograph: Murad Sezer/Reuters
Prosecutors produced thousands of pages of indictments claiming that Imamoğlu’s corrupt activities dated back to 2014, years before he was elected mayor in an upset to Erdoğan’s ruling party. Late last year, the former Istanbul prosecutor Akın Gürlek said Imamoğlu’s corrupt network caused 160bn lira (£2.85bn) in losses to the Turkish state over a 10-year period. If convicted on all charges against him, the Istanbul mayor and presidential candidate faces a prison term of more than 1,900 years.
Observers and rights groups have branded the trial politically motivated, citing the use of secret witnesses as well as a sweeping effort to detain mayors belonging to opposition parties, particularly the CHP, across Turkey.
Human Rights Watch said the trial represented “the culmination a 17-month campaign by the Turkish authorities against the main opposition party through criminal investigations, detentions, and other lawsuits targeting İmamoğlu, other elected officials, and the party leadership, pointing to a concerted effort to remove İmamoğlu from politics and discredit his party in ways that undermine democracy”.
Since his arrest last year, İmamoğlu has been incarcerated in an infamous high-security prison near Istanbul as charges mounted against him. In addition to the charges concerning his university diploma and corruption, the jailed mayor was indicted on espionage charges last month, accused of leaking voter data to foreign countries.
Peopl outside the courthouse where Istanbul’s mayor, Ekrem İmamoğlu, will stand trial. Photograph: Ümit Bektaş/Reuters
“The trial of mayor Ekrem İmamoğlu follows more than a year of weaponizing the criminal justice system against his party and other CHP elected officials while he sits in jail,” said Benjamin Ward, deputy Europe and Central Asia director at Human Rights Watch.
HRW noted that the broad investigations ensnaring leading figures within the CHP began after Gürlek was appointed as Istanbul’s public prosecutor. Last month, Gürlek was appointed justice minister in a cabinet reshuffle.
