Status: 12/14/2022 5:09 p.m
Istanbul’s mayor Imamoglu is considered a possible challenger to President Erdogan in the upcoming elections – now a court has imposed a political ban on him. He was also sentenced to prison for insults.
A Turkish court has imposed a political ban on Istanbul Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu. It also sentenced the 52-year-old to two years and seven months in prison.
The politician is accused of publicly insulting officials. His lawyer announced to the AFP news agency that he wanted to appeal the verdict.
Imamoglu is a member of the Kemalist CHP, which according to surveys is currently the opposition party with the most votes in Turkey. He is considered a rising political star and a potential challenger to Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan in the elections scheduled for 2023.
Accusation: Officials called “idiots”.
In the indictment, Imamoglu was accused of publicly insulting the members of the Turkish electoral authority in connection with the local elections in 2019. He is said to have described those “who canceled the elections on March 31” as “idiots”.
Imamoglu’s lawyer had described the process and the allegations against his client as “baseless”. Imamoglu did not mean the electoral authority, but was reacting to the same insult by the interior minister against him, his lawyers said in the final defense. The interior minister, on the other hand, is not on trial. Opposition members described the process as politically motivated.
2019 narrowly won against AKP candidate
At an earlier hearing in November, prosecutors had asked for a prison sentence of between 15 months and four years. Imamoglu himself said the process was politically motivated. “It’s really sad that we’ve come this far, but I still want to trust the judges,” he said shortly before the verdict was announced in an interview with Turkish private broadcaster TV100.
Imamoglu narrowly won the 2019 Istanbul mayoral election against the candidate of the ruling AKP party. However, the election commission annulled the result at the request of the AKP and had the election repeated – Imamoglu won again. Observers see his victory in the 16-million metropolis as an indirect defeat for Erdogan, who campaigned for his party’s candidate. The city had previously been ruled by the AKP and its political predecessors for more than 20 years.
During the trial, several hundred people gathered in front of Istanbul’s city hall to protest against the trial. CHP boss Kemal Kilicdaroglu broke off his trip to Germany in the evening in response to the verdict, as the party announced.