Turkey’s authoritarian leader, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, said on Monday that the “show” put on by protesters in support of jailed Istanbul mayor Ekrem Imamoglu will soon come to an end.
“Those who terrorize our streets and want to turn this country into a place of chaos have nowhere to go. The path they have taken is a dead end,” Erdogan said.
Erdogan has dismissed the protests as “street terrorism” and “evil” since they began after Imamoglu was arrested last week.
Erdogan’s critics, including members of Imamoglu’s CHP party, accused Erdogan of having the popular mayor arrested on trumped-up charges to knock him out of the next presidential election. Erdogan is rapidly approaching the legal limit for the presidency he has held for over two decades. Unless he manages to amend the Turkish constitution, he will need to call early elections to secure another term, and current polling suggests Imamoglu would defeat him.
On Wednesday, Erdogan angrily accused his opponents of “sinking the economy” by orchestrating massive protests in Istanbul, Ankara, and other major cities against Imamoglu’s arrest.
Erdogan claimed the opposition has become “so desperate that they would throw the country and the nation into the fire.” He vowed that Imamoglu’s supporters would be “held accountable before the courts” for their acts of “sabotage targeting the Turkish economy.”
The Turkish economy has indeed taken a beating since Imamoglu was arrested, intensifying a general downward trend under the last few years of Erdogan’s leadership – which is one of the major reasons Imamoglu attracted so much support as a presidential contender. The Turkish stock market just concluded its worst week since the 2008 global financial crisis.
CHP, and Imamoglu himself, have urged their supporters to march in the streets. Over 1,400 people have been detained during the protests, which were banned from the outset under Erdogan’s orders.
CHP chairman Ozgur Ozel told a crowd of student protesters outside Istanbul’s City Hall on Tuesday night that the next big rally would be held at a public square on Saturday.
“To support Imamoglu, to object to his arrest, to object to the detention of each of our mayors. To demand transparent, open, live broadcast trials, to say that we have had enough and we want early elections,” he said of the rally’s purpose.
Ozel, who has been giving almost non-stop public speeches since Imamoglu was arrested, said Tuesday night’s demonstration outside city hall was a “great end” to the first phase of the protest movement – and a “big kick-off” for the next stage.
CHP formally nominated Imamoglu as its presidential candidate on Sunday, even though he is imprisoned. On Wednesday, the Istanbul municipal assembly – where CHP holds a majority of seats – tapped deputy mayor Nuri Aslan to serve as proxy mayor while Imamoglu is in jail.
Imamoglu himself wrote a social media post from prison on Wednesday denouncing police brutality against protesters.
“A group of people who I cannot call police are mistreating our young children who are like diamonds in custody. I cannot call them police because my honorable police would not do this cruelty to the young children of the nation,” he wrote.
The U.N. Human Rights Commission expressed concerns this week about police violence against the Imamoglu protesters, as did U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio during a meeting with Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan.
Agence France-Presse (AFP) chairman Fabrice Fries wrote a letter to Erdogan on Tuesday urging him to “intervene” in the case of AFP photographer Yasin Akgul, who was one of seven journalists arrested while covering the pro-Imamoglu demonstrations.
“Yasin Akgul was not part of the protest,” Fries told Erdogan. “As a journalist, he was covering one of the many demonstrations that have been organized in the country since Wednesday 19 March. He has taken exactly 187 photographs since the start of the protests, each one a witness to his work as a journalist.”
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