On this Wednesday, December 14, night has already fallen on Istanbul, but there are several thousand shouting, in front of the town hall of the Turkish megalopolis, in the Fatih district. “Law and Justice!” some intone, “don’t shut up or you’ll be next!” warn others. Popular anger has taken to the streets of the European side of Istanbul.
A figure of the opposition, the mayor Ekrem Imamoglu has just, to everyone’s surprise, been sentenced to 2 years and seven months in prison, a sentence accompanied by a ban on participating in political life. In question, comments he had made in Strasbourg during a visit to the European Parliament: in response to a sting from the Turkish Minister of the Interior, who called him “an idiot who is going to complain about Turkey to the Parliament European”, the mayor of Istanbul had called “those who canceled the elections” idiots. In 2019, his victory in the municipal elections was invalidated by the authorities, forcing Imamoglu to participate in a new election three months later, which he then won hands down.
The city councilor said he wanted to appeal this conviction, which could cost him his seat and lead him to prison. “It’s a political revenge from power that has never digested the loss of Istanbul,” said Yasin, 52, who came to demonstrate with his wife, Turkish flag in hand. “The power is trying to muzzle the opposition, but they make a miscalculation, assures this private executive. They have already tried to prevent his election in the past by using unfair means and it backfired: they even shocked some of the AKP supporters.” Yasin refers to Erdogan’s party, which does not hesitate to insult its opponents, described as “terrorist henchmen”, “traitors” and even, recently, “sluts”.
A power panic?
On this Wednesday evening, perched on the platform of a bus, Ekrem Imamoglu harangues his supporters and does not hesitate to draw a parallel with Erdogan, himself sentenced in 1998 to several months in prison for “incitement to hatred” after reciting a nationalist poem when he himself was mayor of Istanbul. “The day when justice comes, it will also be for those who used it as a political weapon”, launches the condemned mayor, ironically exhuming a quote from Erdogan.
Supported by Meral Aksener, the president of the second opposition party (the Iyi Party, from the hard right), Imamoglu announced the holding of a meeting this Thursday, December 15 and a meeting of the six opposition parties, united for a common candidacy against the outgoing president. “Erdogan is given as a big loser in all the polls, that’s why they are panicking,” judge Özgür Kaya, 36. For him, as for the majority of the demonstrators in Istanbul, it is paradoxically the hope which dominates: “if it does not divide, the opposition is certain to prevail”, thinks the thirty-year-old.
The court decision against Imamoglu, a rising star of the opposition, risks boosting his popularity. Above all, it inaugurates the start of an extremely tense presidential race. “They are ready to do anything not to lose, but their time is over, this country deserves better than that”, slice Tuba, engineer in her forties. An optimism that resonates with the slogan that carried Imamoglu to the town hall of Istanbul and that his supporters take up in chorus in the Istanbul night: “Everything will be fine.”