Istanbul’s mayor Imamoglu from the opposition CHP has to answer to the court again. He is accused of bid fraud. There are indications that he is pushing to the top of the party.
Imamoglu is a name that doesn’t really suit a top politician of a secular party. Because translated it means: the son of the Imam. But the name suits Imamoglu quite well. Because the 52-year-old comes from Trabzon on the Black Sea, a very conservative region of Turkey. The hometown of the family of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is only a few kilometers away.
But the two have more in common: the way they speak on stage, captivate their followers and the way their voices sound during speeches. And Imamoglu can also inspire conservative Islamic Turks, as he showed in the 2019 local election campaign: he won the metropolis of Istanbul. From then on, at the latest, he was probably a red rag for the Turkish president, an opponent.
First case is attached court of appeal
Step by step, Ankara has curtailed the powers of Istanbul’s city administration in order to make the mayor – according to critics – look incompetent.
You also describe the trials against Ekrem Imamoglu as politically motivated. Last year, a court sentenced him to two years and seven months in prison and banned him from politics for allegedly calling members of the Turkish electoral board “idiots.” However, the judgment is not yet final. The case is still before Turkey’s highest court of appeal. That’s why Imamoglu is still mayor of Istanbul and not in prison.
Process revolves around bidding
He and six other defendants face similar sentences in a second trial beginning today. It’s about a case that dates back about eight years, Turkish media reports. At that time, Imamoglu was still the mayor of the municipality of Beylikdüzü near Istanbul.
Accordingly, there should have been a tender for staff. An unsuccessful company had lodged an objection to the municipality’s decision, which was rejected. That brought the public prosecutor on the plan. Now Imamoglu and the others have to answer in court because they are said to have manipulated the tender. Turkish media quote Imamoglu’s lawyer as saying that his client had no authority to approve tenders at the time.
long as presidential candidate traded
Critics suspect it’s about eliminating him politically. In the case of the presidential election, that could have worked. Imamoglu has long been considered one of three possible opposition candidates in May’s presidential election. In the end, neither Imamoglu nor the mayor of Ankara Mansur Yavas entered the race, but the CHP chairman Kemal Kilicdaroglu, who lost in the runoff. One can only speculate whether things would have been different with the charismatic Imamoglu.
And what exactly led to Kilicdaroglu’s nomination is also not clear. But it is not only the threat of a political ban that may have played a role, but also the fact that Imamoglu would have had to give up his mayoral post in Istanbul if he had run for office. A member of Erdogan’s AKP party would then have taken over, because they have the majority in the city parliament – that’s the way it is in Turkey.
The largest opposition party, the CHP, definitely wants to keep Istanbul and Ankara. The victories of Yavas and Imamoglu were the CHP’s biggest triumphs in recent years. During the election campaign, Imamoglu made it from unknown mayor to political star. He addressed secular and religious conservatives and tried not to further divide Turkish society. It worked for him in 2019, but not for Kilicdaroglu four years later in the presidential election campaign.
Imamoglu is likely to have ambitions follow up
But Imamoglu doesn’t seem to be just Erdogan’s competitor. He has also been stepping on Kilicdaroglu’s feet more and more since the lost election at the latest. The 52-year-old does not say it openly, but there are indications that he is pushing to the top of the CHP. He speaks of a fundamental change in the party – change is the only constant. According to the Turkish media, Imamoglu asked Kilicdaroglu to promote change in the party – one could see that as an indirect demand for his resignation. The party leader refused.
The two are said to have met yesterday in Ankara. Nothing is known about the content of the talks. The CHP party conference is supposed to take place in the fall. It can be expected that Imamoglu will continue to pursue his career ambitions – if the court of appeal does not confirm his sentence by then: political ban and prison.