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00:00Turkey is seeing its biggest protests in more than a decade.
00:03Hundreds of thousands of people rallied in Istanbul on Friday evening,
00:07angry at the detention on Wednesday of the city's opposition mayor Ekrem İmamoğlu.
00:12They were defying a ban on demonstrating.
00:14Opposition leader Özgür Özel, head of the mayor's Republican People's Party, or CHP,
00:20urged people to demonstrate peacefully.
00:22He condemned a ban in place on protests in the city.
00:25If you try to harm Mayor Ekrem,
00:33Istanbul itself will break the hand that reaches out against its will.
00:40As he spoke, clashes erupted on the sidelines of the protest,
00:44with riot police firing tear gas and rubber bullets.
00:49Clashes also broke out in Ankara and here in the western coastal city of Izmir,
00:54where police fired water cannons and tear gas against protesters.
01:00İmamoğlu is President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan's biggest political rival.
01:06He now faces charges including graft and aiding a terrorist group.
01:10Tensions could rise this weekend when a court is expected to rule to formally arrest him.
01:16On Sunday, the CHP is set to announce him as its presidential candidate for the next elections,
01:21currently set for 2028.
01:24Erdoğan's government rejects claims that
01:26legal actions against opposition figures are politically motivated.
01:34Pointing to the streets instead of cauldrons to defend theft,
01:39plunder, lawlessness and fraud is a grave irresponsibility.
01:47European leaders have called the detention a sign of democratic backsliding in Turkey.
01:53Erdoğan has been in power as either prime minister or president for more than two decades.
01:58He was mayor of Istanbul from 1994 to 1998.