A coffin, symbolizing Turkish democracy, carried by demonstrators. It is the recurrent image of protests that bring together hundreds of thousands of Turks since the arrest of Ekrem Imamoglu, mayor of Istanbul and principal rival of the Islamo-nationalist president Recep Tayyip Erdogan, on March 19, on accusations of “fraud” and “corruption”. In Istanbul, but also in other cities in the country, including the most conservative, revolted and worried Turks are mobilizing to prevent the country from falling definitively in authoritarianism.
Sunday, March 23, the same day of his incarceration, Ekrem Imamoglu was to be appointed candidate of the main opposition party, the CHP, secular and nationalist, in the presidential election. The ballot was only planned in 2028, but this appointment was aimed at protecting it from legal proceedings which multiplied against him, while he is considered in opinion investigations as the only one capable of beating Erdogan in the polls. “If we do nothing now, we will no longer be able to go back, the elections will no longer have any sense and we will become a dictatorship,” worries Ahmet, a 42 -year -old engineer, who came to protest in front of the town hall of Istanbul at the call of the opposition who summons his troops every evening. “Power is in a complete authoritarian drift, but if Erdogan dreams of Turkish Putin, he must remember that Turkey is not Russia, whether it be the economy or society,” said Berk Esen, professor of political science at the Sabanci University of Istanbul.
Hundreds of arrests
The arrest of Imamoglu obliges the CHP, the party founded by Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, to review its strategy based solely on the elections – it had also won the last local elections in 2024, exceeding the AKP of President Erdogan on the scale of the country. He now calls on the Turks to maintain their presence on the street, despite the police protest and hundreds of arrests that aim for both demonstrators and journalists who try to cover events. The party has also engaged in a boycott campaign, calling for its supporters and sympathizing entrepreneurs to no longer finance the progressive media through advertising, and to no longer consume the products of the major Turkish brands and holdings close to power. “It is an interesting undermining work knowing that the Turkish middle and upper classes are acquired by the cause of the opposition, which therefore has a very strong economic strike force” underlines Berk Esen.
Each evening, the town hall of the city is surrounded by an immense crowd, composed mainly of young people, who intend to show their support for Ekrem Imamoglu, re -elected hands down a year ago, but also to prevent the authorities to take possession of the premises by force to name a “kayyum”, a tutor, designated by the power to direct the municipality instead of the elected representative, as Opposition town halls across the country. Masked and decked out in swimming pool glasses to combat tear gas, ege, 20-year-old nursing student refuses to give his name, for fear of reprisals, but says he is ready to defend the place: “We have long accused my generation of being apolitical, it is enough to look at the crowd to see that it is false, he exclaims, while the last massive manifestations go back to 2013. The economy is bad, our freedoms are constantly attacked and now we are even withdrawn the right to choose our candidate “.
Erdogan took a risk by trying to get rid of his rival n ° 1. But he probably thought that a historic shooting window was presented. International, the arrival of Donald Trump, “my friend, my brother”, as he calls him, to the American presidency guarantees him, he hopes, the benevolence of Washington. In addition, in a context where the positions of the new American president on the war in Ukraine, NATO, or the European Union concern Europeans, the latter could seek to spare Turkey, which has the second NATO army, to avoid pushing it into the arms of Moscow. A danger whose Turkish opposition is aware: “Europe must not abandon its values,” said the president of the CHP, Özgür Özel. She has already made bargaining with Erdogan so that he keeps migrants, now she must not, in the name of concerns about his security, sacrifice Turkish democracy. “
On the inner level, Reis managed to obtain from the imprisoned founder of the Kurdish guerrilla warfare in the PKK, Abdullah Öcalan, which he calls to abandon arms and dissolve the organization. He subsequently started negotiations with the Prokurde party Dem to obtain his support at least partial, weakening the opposition block. “The so much desired peace can only lead with the adhesion of a majority of society and in a democratic context, nevertheless considers Mithat Sancar, deputy for the DEM. Unfortunately, power, which should multiply the democratic openings, makes the exact opposite and intensifies the repression and the illegal arrests.”
Urgent and existential questions for opposition
If the DEM has partially rear machine and is indignant at the arrest of Imamoglu, partly elected thanks to the voices of the Kurds Stambouliot, the mainly Kurdish provinces of the country remain away from the protest movement. Sunday, March 23, when the CHP maintained its call for vote for the designation of Imamoglu as a candidate, collecting 15 million signatures during the day and called to demonstrate in the evening, tens of thousands of Kurds of Istanbul had gathered, a few kilometers from the town hall, to celebrate Newroz, the New Year Kurd. At the end of the festivities, there are few of them going to join the protests, surely discouraged by nationalist slogans and the very right -handed declarations of certain CHP officials.
Many questions, urgent and existential arise at the Turkish opposition: how to maintain a block bringing together the radical left and part of the secular extreme right, the Turks and the Kurds, and convince the undecided to join the movement? How to maintain his presence in the streets in the face of repression without rushing to escalation of violence? How, above all, avoid the blow of Turkish democracy, which already has a knee on the ground? The future of the country is played out now.
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