Turkey’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, has launched an unprecedented crackdown on his main political opponents, with more than 500 people detained in just nine months, according to a Reuters review of the extensive investigation that has accelerated dramatically in recent days.
Erdoğan said the investigation was targeting a corrupt network that he described as “an octopus whose arms stretch to other parts of Turkey and abroad.” Not since the coups of the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s have such high-ranking political leaders been removed from office on the basis of as yet unpublished evidence, which the suspects’ lawyers describe as fabricated.
The investigation, which began in Istanbul but has now spread across the country, has targeted only local governments led by the main opposition Republican People’s Party, or CHP. The CHP denies the corruption allegations, calling them an outright attempt to dismantle a democratic alternative for Turks—an accusation the government rejects.
According to a review of legal filings and state notices, 14 elected CHP mayors, including Istanbul’s Ekrem İmamoğlu—Erdoğan’s main rival—and more than 200 party members or local officials have been jailed or placed under house arrest pending trial. İmamoğlu, mayor of Istanbul, a city of 17 million people, was jailed in March pending a court hearing on corruption charges he denies. Alongside him—who from behind bars still leads Erdoğan in some opinion polls—more than 500 people have been detained and questioned since the investigation began in October last year, including at least 202 since last week alone, according to the Reuters report.
Since Tuesday last week, the investigation has expanded to include Izmir, Turkey’s third-largest city, as well as Antalya, Adana and Adıyaman—all of which were won by the centrist CHP against Erdoğan’s conservative AKP in local elections last March, the biggest electoral defeat in the party’s history.
Just days after Erdoğan’s “octopus” comment in May, five Istanbul and Adana district mayors were arrested on corruption charges. Turkey’s Directorate of Communications later released a list of past AKP mayors who were convicted on similar charges in separate probes, saying claims that the CHP is being exclusively targeted are “entirely unfounded.” However, no legal action has been taken in the 14 Istanbul districts governed by the AKP.
Turkey has in the past seen waves of mass arrests of pro-Kurdish leaders, civil society members, military officers and outlawed groups, especially during Erdoğan’s increasingly authoritarian tenure. The CHP had been relatively spared in the Erdoğan era, in which it lost a string of elections to his AKP since 2002.
Though the next presidential vote is not scheduled until 2028, it would need to come sooner if Erdoğan wants to run again. He could also seek to amend the constitutional two-term limit.
