Dominic Fritz went to Turkey for a solidarity action with the arrested mayor of Istanb to visit the penitentiary

The mayors of the cities of Barcelona, ​​Athens, Budapest, Sofia, Utrecht, Zagreb and Timisoara are present on Wednesday in Istanbul in an action meant to signal to the international public opinion the “political” nature of Ekrem ̇mamoğlu and “more brutal repression” against the local administrations in Turkey, according to a press release.

During the action, Dominic Fritz and the other European mayors will visit Imamoglu in prison and will be delayed with local authorities and with representatives of opposition and civil society.

“Timisoara knows the price of freedom, but also how important international solidarity is. Today, it is our turn to be support for a pressure democracy. We have accepted the invitation to go to Istanbul because Timisoara and Romania does not accept abuse and repression. Solidarity between communities goes beyond the borders,”

The movement is organized by the Eurocies network, the largest network of European cities that gather 200 big cities among our members, representing over 150 million people from 38 countries, inside and outside the European Union.

Imamoglu, after the five -month -old grates

In March, the mayor of Istanbul, Ekrem Imamoglu, the main political rival of President Tayyip Erdogan, was incarcerated while waiting for the process for alleged corruption charges. This has triggered the largest street protests in the last decade and a sudden sale of Turkish assets.

Thousands of people went out on the streets of Istanbul after Imamoglu's March arrest, protests that were violently repressed by law enforcement.

In mid -July, he was sentenced to twenty months in prison for insult and intimidation to a prosecutor.

It is for the second time that Imamoglu is convicted of insulting public officials. In 2022, he was sentenced to two years and six months in prison for criticizing the officials of the Electoral Commission following the decision to cancel the Istanbul Municipal elections in 2019, elections in which he had defeated the candidate of the Party, AKP. Imamoglu appealed against that sentence, but this has not yet been re -judged.