Turkiye‘s President Tayyip Erdogan’s top political opponents have been swept up in an unprecedented crackdown, with over 500 detained in nine months, according to a Reuters review of a rapidly expanding investigation.
Turkiye’s president says the probe tackles what he calls a corrupt network that is like “an octopus whose arms stretch to other parts of Turkiye and abroad.”
The investigation, which began in Istanbul but has spread across the country, has targetted only municipalities run by the main opposition Republican People’s Party, or CHP, the party of modern Turkiye’s secularist founder, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk.
The CHP denies the corruption allegations and calls them a naked attempt to eliminate a democratic alternative for Turks, a charge the government refutes.
Power Consolidation Amid Silence
The crackdown tightens Erdogan’s two-decade grip on power at a time when Turkiye’s influence in the Middle East and Europe has grown. For this reason, diplomats and analysts say, it has garnered only muted criticism from Western allies as a threat to democracy even as street protests erupted in the spring.
According to the review of legal filings and state disclosures, 14 elected CHP mayors, including Istanbul’s Ekrem Imamoglu – Erdogan’s main rival – and more than 200 party members or local officials have been jailed pending trial.
Not since a series of coups in the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s have such high-profile political leaders been removed from office on the basis of as yet unpublished evidence, which suspects’ lawyers dismiss as fabricated.
“These investigations are being used as a tool for political attrition rather than objective investigation of concrete events,” said Ertugrul Gunay, a former culture and tourism minister in Erdogan’s cabinets between 2007 and 2013.
He resigned from the ruling AK Party (AKP) after thousands of Turks were arrested over the anti-government Gezi Park protests of 2013.
The latest legal drive, though smaller in scale, has gone further in targetting a would-be future government, riding high in the polls.
It reflects “anxiety and panic that (Erdogan’s) ruling party has for the next elections,” Gunay told Reuters.
Erdogan and his ministers have repeatedly rejected as unfounded critics’ accusations of judicial interference, saying the independent courts need time to sort through evidence.
They say such criticism reflects an opposition party reckoning with its illegal practices and internal strife, and undermines public trust.
“This is a legal process, not a political one. We are not involved in any aspect of this process,” Erdogan told his AKP MPs in parliament on Wednesday.
More Than 220 Imprisoned
At the centre of the investigation is Imamoglu, mayor of Istanbul’s 17 million people, who was jailed in March pending a court hearing on corruption charges he denies.
He is the CHP presidential candidate in any future election, and his arrest sparked the biggest protests since Gezi and a sharp lira selloff, both of which have since abated.
But beyond Imamoglu – who from behind bars still leads Erdogan in some polls – the Reuters review found that more than 500 people were detained and questioned since the probe began in October last year, including at least 202 since last week alone.
Of those, more than 220 were imprisoned or put under house arrest, according to the review, which was based in part on a compilation of reports by state-run Anadolu Agency.
Erdogan’s office and the Justice Ministry did not respond this week to a detailed request for a tally of detentions and arrests, and for a comment on the Reuters review’s findings.
Reuters further found that at least 36 people, mostly those in the private sector doing business with municipalities, provided a second statement to prosecutors from prison under the “effective repentance” provision of Turkish law – after which 32 of them were released from prison under judicial control measures.
These statements have identified more suspects, disclosures from prosecutors and others show.
Since Tuesday last week, the investigation has spread to Izmir, Turkiye’s third-largest city, as well as Antalya, Adana and Adiyaman – all won by the centrist CHP over Erdogan’s ruling conservative AKP in last year’s March municipal elections, the party’s biggest ever electoral defeat.
(With inputs from Reuters)
