Istanbul: After his third night in detention, the mayor of Istanbul Ekrem Imamoglu was to appear before the prosecutors on Saturday, just a few hours after hundreds of thousands struck the streets through Turkiye in a huge challenge of challenge.
It was the third consecutive night that the demonstrators had rallied against the arrest of Imamoglu – the greatest political rival of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, whose arrest launched the biggest street demonstrations in Turkiye on Wednesday in more than a decade.
After an evening of clashes in Istanbul, Ankara and the western city of Izmir between the demonstrators and the riot police, which pulled tear gas, rubber bullets and water cannons to disperse them, the security forces arrested 97 people, said the Minister of the Interior, Ali Yerlikaya.
And the media said the police had a dozens of houses during the night, although there was no immediate confirmation of the detained number.
The 53 -year -old mayor, who was arrested just a few days before the CHP called him his candidate for the 2028 presidential race, was addressed to the police on Saturday morning as part of the “terrorist” investigation, said party sources AFP.
He then had to appear before the prosecutors of the Caglayan courthouse in 1800 GMT to be questioned in the transplant and terrorist probes, they said.
Already named in a growing list of legal probes, Imamoglu – which was re -elected in a resounding way last year – was accused alongside six other people to “help and encourage a terrorist organization” – namely the Kurdish group prohibits PKK.
It is also the subject of an investigation for “corruption, extortion, corruption, aggravated fraud and the illegal obtaining of personal for profit in the context of a criminal organization” as well as 99 other suspects.
Questioned for six hours
On Friday, he was questioned by police for six hours on registry allegations, the party said.
“Mr. Imamoglu denies all the charges against him,” said one of his lawyers, Mehmet Pehlivan.
“The detention aimed to undermine the reputation of Mr. Imamoglu in the eyes of society,” he wrote on X early Saturday, saying that the two probes were “based on false allegations” and “a violation of the right to a fair trial”.
The demonstrators across the country were to join again on Saturday evening.
In a message on X sent via his lawyers, Imamoglu declared that he was “honored and proud” of the demonstrators who reached the streets in more than 50 of the 81 provinces of Turkiye, claiming that they “protected our Republic, our democracy, the future of a just Turkiye and the will of our country”.
Addressing the crowd outside the Town Hall in Istanbul on Friday evening, Ozgur Ozel, who heads the main opposition CHP, said that 300,000 people had joined the demonstration in defiance of a prohibition of protest and a net warning from Erdogan that Turkiye would not tolerate the “terror of the street”.
While he spoke, the crowd applauded and applauded, waving flags and banners and singing slogans like: “do not remain silent or it will be the next”.
This decision against Imamoglu harmed the Turkish LIRA and the financial markets, the Bist 100 index of the Stock Exchange of the Stock Exchange almost 8% on Friday.
