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Political upheaval in Turkey: Istanbul mayor arrested and deposed
FRANCE 24 English
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3/23/2025
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00:00
For more, Andy Hillier joins me on set. Hi, Andy. So, protesters are gathering for a fifth
00:06
day in Turkey today. Can you start by taking us through today's developments?
00:09
There have been a lot of significant developments today. As you mentioned there, perhaps the
00:15
most significant coming in the last few hours, Ekrem Imamoglu suspended as mayor of Istanbul.
00:24
That was after he was earlier this morning formally arrested and charged with corruption.
00:30
He arrived at a civilian prison quite a distance outside Istanbul just a few hours ago as well,
00:39
as you can see in these pictures here. Now, he has posted his reaction to social media
00:45
and I can read for you now just one of the things he said. He said that he invited the
00:49
nation to a responsible struggle for rights, adding that the struggle for rights was a
00:55
matter for the future of the nation and for the nation's children. He also added encouraging
01:02
citizens to go out and vote today. I'll just tell you in a short while what he's referring
01:08
to there. Either way, the situation as it stands is likely, if anything, to stoke and
01:13
inflame tensions even further in Turkey. Now, Imamoglu's party, the Republican People's
01:19
Party, that is the main opposition party in Turkey, has gone ahead with this primary
01:23
vote. It is, if anything, more an informal vote set to confirm Imamoglu as the party's
01:30
contender in the 2028 presidential election. He will certainly win that vote, but that
01:37
vote certainly won't be recognised by Turkey's Supreme Electoral Council. Now, what the CHP,
01:42
the Republican People's Party, has done is encourage members of the party and non-members
01:48
of the party to participate. So the point here is that they want to turn this vote really
01:53
into a kind of symbol for the opposition to show their opposition to President Erdogan.
02:00
So we are going to see large crowds forming tonight for a fifth night outside Istanbul
02:06
City Hall in Saracan. So how do these protests, Andy, compare to the last big wave of anti-government
02:12
demonstrations that we saw over 10 years ago in 2013? Yeah, in 2013, of course, we saw
02:18
the Gezi Park protest. These were protests against plans to build a mosque and a shopping
02:25
mall on one of central Istanbul's only green spaces. I was actually there. I covered these
02:31
protests. I remember when there was, at the moment, protesters formed a human chain across
02:35
Taksim Square to symbolically protect the park moments before the occupation in that
02:42
park was cleared by riot police. Now, that sparked days of rioting in Istanbul and other
02:46
cities across Turkey. Of course, that protest Gezi Park becoming a symbol of something bigger,
02:53
the protests morphed into a demonstration against mass corruption and against authoritarianism.
02:58
Now, since then, the slide towards authoritarianism in Turkey has become more pronounced. And
03:04
what many demonstrators have been saying this time around, including even demonstrators
03:08
here in Paris, who I spoke to yesterday, there was a small demonstration held by the opposition
03:13
party, the CHP, here in Paris. They've been saying that this is, for them, shaping up
03:18
to be a fight about the future of Turkish democracy, or at least in their eyes, what's
03:22
left of Turkish democracy. President Erdogan hasn't, I think, hesitated to drive a wedge
03:29
right through Turkish society in the last decade with his divisive rhetoric. You have
03:35
two visions of Turkey, really, one embodied by Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the other embodied
03:40
by Ekrem Imamoglu. And it's for that reason that neither side will want to back down.
03:46
So finally, Andrew, there are also, interestingly enough, parallels between Erdogan and Imamoglu.
03:53
Can you walk us through some of those?
03:55
Yeah, that's right. They may represent or embody different visions of Turkish society,
03:59
but there are some significant parallels. And those parallels certainly won't have been
04:02
lost on President Erdogan. He'll be aware of them. Both men spent a part of their childhood
04:08
in Trabzon province, which is on the Black Sea coast. And most notably, they have both
04:13
served as mayor of Istanbul. President Erdogan actually made his name in Turkey's largest
04:19
city in the 1990s. He famously said, whoever wins Istanbul wins Turkey. Now, those words
04:23
may come back to haunt him. It will have stung him personally, very personally, President
04:29
Erdogan, when he lost the city in the municipal elections in 2019 to the opposition, to Ekrem
04:35
Imamoglu. He lost again in 2024 to Ekrem. His party lost to Ekrem Imamoglu in 2024 last
04:41
year as well. Now, interestingly enough, President Erdogan was also arrested in 1999 when he
04:49
was mayor of Istanbul. On his release, that reinforced his popularity. It sealed his political
04:56
rise. His party went on to win the general election in 2002, three years later, and he
05:01
became prime minister a year after that in 2003. We are three years out from a presidential
05:07
election officially in Turkey. Will the parallels continue or will they stop? That's the big
05:13
unknown for now.
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