Mansur Yavas, Mayor of Ankara Photo: Akyuz Efekan / Abaca / Abaca Press / Profimedia
The Turkish authorities held on Saturday three more mayors of the main opposition party, according to a declaration of the prosecutor and reports in the media, thus extending a repression of months that exceeded its initial borders-Istanbul, reports Reuters and AFP, quoted by News.ro.
The mayors of the big southern cities Adana and Adiyaman have been detained for blackmail charges, said the Chief Prosecutor's Office in Istanbul, along with eight other people.
Mansur Yavas The new mayor of Ankarea and a well -known opponent of Recep Tayyip Erdogan, denounced the arrest of three mayors of the Republican People's Party (CHP), the main opposition party in Turkey. Mansur Yavas said the arrests were carried out in an investigation for organized crime charges. “Our mayor of Adana, Zeydan Karalar, our mayor of Antalya, Muhittin Bocek, and the mayor of Adiyaman, Abdurrahman Tutdere, were arrested,” wrote Mansur Yavas on X.
The NTV television has announced that the mayor of Antalya and Deputy Mayor of the Buyukcekme district in Istanbul have been detained as part of the larger investigation in which hundreds of members of the Republican People's Party (CHP), including 11 mayors, were targeted from October last year.
The CHP largely denies the accusations and qualifies the investigation as politically motivated, accusations denied by the government.
In March, the mayor of Istanbul, Ekrem Imamoglu, the main political rival of President Tayyip Erdogan, was incarcerated while waiting for the corruption trial, which he denies. This has triggered the largest street protests in the last decade and a sudden sale of Turkish assets.
An increasing number of investigations concerns the chosen representatives of CHP, while Recep Tayyip Erdogan's government exerts increasing pressure on the party, who won a crushing victory over his AKP party in the 2024 local elections.
“In a system in which the law bends and oscillates according to politics, in which justice is applied for a group and ignored for another, no one should expect us to trust the rule of law or believe in court,” wrote Mansur Yavas, adding: “
