BAKU, Azerbaijan, March 21. In his first public remarks on the detention of Istanbul Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan accused the opposition of playing up the incident in order to take attention away from their own internal problems, Trend reports.
"The opposition’s attempt to present its internal conflicts or problems with the law as the country’s most pressing problem is the height of hypocrisy. They have been trying to politicize the subject," he said.
"The opposition is aware that the majority of tip-offs and documents [in Imamoglu’s case] have been handed over to the judicial authorities by fellow [party] members. Problems of the Republican People’s Party are not the problems of our country or people. These are the problems of a very small group of ambitious people in their own offices. We, as a political party or an alliance, have no time for the opposition's theatrics," Erdogan said in a televised address.
To note, on March 19 the Istanbul Prosecutor General's Office issued a detention warrant for seven suspects, including Istanbul Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu, Deputy Secretary General of Istanbul Municipality Mahir Polat, and the head of the Sisli municipality Resul Emrah Sahan, on charges of "assisting the PKK terrorist organization.
The communiqué from the Prosecutor General's Office indicated that as part of the municipal elections held on March 31, 2024, an activity called "Urban Consensus" was carried out with the aim of strengthening the influence of the PKK terrorist organization in major cities, including Istanbul.
The leaders of the terrorist organization, Cemil Bayik and Mustafa Karasu, published their ideas and instructions through media outlets connected to the organization in the run-up to the election.
There is evidence that in the Istanbul election, Istanbul Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu formed an alliance with the Peoples' Democratic Congress (PDK), an umbrella structure of the terrorist organization, based on the principle of "urban consensus." As a result, operations were simultaneously conducted against PDK members in several cities, especially in Istanbul, and investigations continue into the detained individuals.
The investigation revealed that members of the municipal council elected on the Republican People's Party (CHP) list, as well as some appointed mayors, are connected to the terrorist organization.
As part of the investigation, based on gathered evidence, Imamoglu, Polat, Sahan, Head of the Institute of Reforms Mehmet Ali Caliskan, as well as A.B., identified as a member of the ideological structure of the terrorist organization and currently on the run, an employee of the "Spectrum House" company, and H.A., whose name was linked to recruitment for the armed forces of the terrorist organization in 2018, as well as Deputy Mayor of Sisli Ebru Ozdemir, are allegedly involved in the "urban consensus" activity.
Ekrem Imamoglu is a Turkish entrepreneur, real estate developer, and social democratic politician now holding the position of the 32nd mayor of Istanbul. He was initially elected with 4.1 million votes, securing victory by a margin of 13,000 votes against his AKP rival in the March 2019 mayoral election as the joint candidate of the Nation Alliance, including the CHP and the Good Party.