New large-scale demonstrations are characterizing central Istanbul on Sunday evening.
Despite the authorities closing bridges and streets to prevent demonstrators from reaching the protests, thousands have gathered at the city hall, where they have been met by riot-equipped police.
The new demonstrations are being held since a court decided that the popular mayor Imamoglu should be prosecuted and imprisoned pending trial.
Only hours after the announcement, the Ministry of the Interior announced that Imamoglu would be removed from the mayoral office in Turkey's largest city.
"I will not back down", Imamoglu had written on X.
Not surprised
Jenny White, professor at the Institute for Turkey Studies at Stockholm University, is not directly surprised by the news that Ekrem Imamoglu is being removed as mayor.
The government is doing what they have done before, appointing their own people as mayors. They have done so with Kurdish mayors for several years, she says.
Opinion polls show that Imamoglu would defeat President Recep Tayyip Erdogan in the next election, and the arrest has been criticized as staged to get rid of him before the election. Government representatives deny this and claim that the judiciary is acting independently.
This has not stopped hundreds of thousands from taking to the streets in large protests – despite the authorities issuing a demonstration ban. Sunday's protests follow four days of similar scenes in Istanbul and several other places in Turkey.
To curb the protests, the authorities have asked the platform X to shut down over 700 accounts. The platform says it has not complied with the request. However, Politico reported on Saturday that "several people's" accounts in Turkey had been shut down.
Election of presidential candidate
On Sunday, Imamoglu's party CHP held a primary election to select a presidential candidate, a vote that Imamoglu is expected to win.
Despite the party having only around 1.8 million members, 15 million people are said to have voted, according to CHP "in solidarity" with Imamoglu.
The party had opened the election to all Turkish citizens, not just party members, in the hope of gaining even greater support for the imprisoned mayor.
I am quite convinced that most people will vote for Imamoglu. It creates a strange situation when a person who is imprisoned is likely to be elected as presidential candidate, says Jenny White.
.
The Republic of Turkey was proclaimed in 1923 with founding father Kemal Atatürk as president. It was to be a modern national state with universal suffrage to a parliament, but until the 1950 election, only one party, the Republican People's Party (CHP), was allowed.
CHP, today the largest opposition party, traditionally describes itself as secular and social democratic.
The military has intervened in politics several times, both removing and appointing leaders. Throughout the 1990s, the country was ruled by short-lived coalition governments.
In 2001, the current president and former Istanbul mayor Recep Tayyip Erdogan founded the conservative Islamist Justice and Development Party (AKP). It has ruled the country since 2002. Erdogan was prime minister between 2003 and 2014, when he took over the presidency from Abdullah Gül.
Democracy has gradually been dismantled as the president has taken control of, or shut down, regime-critical media. With a constitutional amendment in 2017 and further legislative changes and decrees after the re-election in 2018, Erdogan has reshaped the state apparatus in a way that essentially means that parliamentarism has been replaced by a presidential system. At the same time, Erdogan has given Islam an increasingly prominent place in politics.
Sources: UI and others
