A Turkish court on Sunday jailed the mayor of Istanbul pending his trial on corruption charges, according to the state-run Anadolu news agency, hobbling a potential contender in Turkey's next presidential election and the top rival of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
The mayor, Ekrem Imamoglu, was arrested at his home on Wednesday, four days before he was set to be named the presidential candidate of Turkey's political opposition. He has denied the accusations against him, which Erdogan's opponents have called a ploy to hinder a popular politician's presidential bid.
The court ordered that Imamoglu be jailed on accusations of corruption pending a trial, the state-run news media said. State prosecutors have accused him of leading a criminal organisation and overseeing bribery, bid rigging and other financial misdeeds at City Hall.
Prosecutors also accused him of supporting terrorism through his political coordination with a pro-Kurdish group during local elections last year. The court has not yet ruled on whether he will be jailed for those accusations as well.
The decision to jail Imamoglu, who has been elected mayor three times since 2019, raised the possibility that he would be removed from office.
That alone may not prevent him from running for President, but he faces other roadblocks. The day before his arrest, his alma mater, Istanbul University, voided his diploma, citing improper procedures in his transfer to the school in 1990. Turkey's Constitution stipulates that the President must have completed higher education. The mayor said before he was detained that he would contest the ruling.
Imamoglu faces a slew of other court cases as well, including some that could temporarily bar him from politics.
In a post on X, the mayor called on Turks to stand together against "this black stain on our democracy".
Of his detention, he said: "I stand tall. I will never bow."
Critics of Erdogan, who has dominated Turkish politics for more than two decades, have long accused him of using state power to undermine his rivals. But, they say, arresting a presidential contender to eliminate him from the race before it begins represents a new level of authoritarianism.
Some European leaders have criticised the mayor's arrest, which has prompted protests around Turkey, and they have called on the Turkish government to uphold the rule of law. Senior US officials have said little.
Steve Witkoff, President Trump's West Asia envoy, made no mention of the mayor's detention in an interview with the former Fox News anchor Tucker Carlson that was posted on X on Saturday. But he said that Trump had recently spoken with Erdogan. The call was not made public by the White House at the time.
"There is just a lot of good, positive news coming out of Turkey right now as a result of that conversation," Witkoff said, without providing further details.
New York Times News Service