Vast crowds of students surged onto Istanbul's streets on Monday in the latest protest over the arrest and jailing of Istanbul's opposition mayor that has sparked Turkey's worst unrest in years. FRANCE 24's Peter O'Brien speaks to Massimo D'Angelo, Research Associate at Loughborough University London. He says that the opposition party CHP must broaden the protest movement beyond the party if it wants to maintain momentum.
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NewsTranscript
00:00People are in the streets for a sixth night responding to the call of detained mayor of
00:07Istanbul Ekrem İmamoğlu.
00:09The Interior Ministry says 1,133 people have been arrested and 123 police officers injured
00:17in the protests up to this point.
00:20The Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has called it a quote, movement of violence.
00:25He's pointing the finger at the main opposition party in particular, the CHP, saying it will
00:29be held accountable for injured police officers and damage to property.
00:34Last Wednesday's detention of İmamoğlu, Erdoğan's rival, triggered Turkey's biggest
00:39protests for more than a decade.
00:41And on Sunday, a court jailed him, pending trial on corruption charges that he denies.
00:47More details now with Emerald Maxwell.
00:53It's been a decade since Turkey has seen a protest movement like it.
00:58For the sixth day in a row, Ekrem İmamoğlu's supporters took to the streets of Istanbul,
01:04angry and worried.
01:05See, this is very important for us, for children, for future.
01:09We want democracy.
01:11We want people to choose the elected.
01:14And we want the free will to choose who we want without them being imprisoned.
01:19Istanbul's mayor for over five years, Ekrem İmamoğlu was officially nominated by his
01:23party on Monday to run in the 2028 presidential election as Recep Tayyip Erdoğan's main rival.
01:31İmamoğlu was arrested on Wednesday, then jailed and stripped of his mayorship on charges
01:36of corruption and terrorism.
01:39Charges fabricated, the opposition says, to prevent him from coming to power.
01:44His arrest by Turkish police was followed by violent clashes across the country, leading
01:50to the arrest of more than 1,100 people, according to authorities.
01:55Accused by his critics of undermining democracy, President Erdoğan blamed his opponents.
02:01It has become apparent once again that the opposition cannot be trusted to run a country,
02:08local governments or even a buffet.
02:14The opposition has called for a boycott of the pro-government mainstream media, which
02:18has largely avoided reporting on the nationwide demonstrations.
02:24Let's talk more about this topic with Massimo D'Angelo, Research Associate at the Institute
02:29for Diplomacy and International Affairs at Loughborough University, London.
02:33Not to be confused with Loughborough University, Loughborough.
02:36Thanks for joining us, Massimo.
02:37So what do you make of this latest move from President Erdoğan, that's to directly implicate
02:42the opposition and frame them as responsible for violence in the streets?
02:48Good evening.
02:49Thanks for having me.
02:50Yes, it was a very strong movement from President Erdoğan.
02:55Clearly, Imamoglu in the last years was in the scene as the main oppositional leader.
03:02And as you mentioned, as the video the rebel was showing on Sunday, there were elections,
03:10primary elections within the CHP for choosing the leader of the opposition for the presidential
03:18elections that will be held in 2028, so long ahead.
03:24And I think that Erdoğan chose the right moment to sideline Mayor Imamoglu.
03:30It was the fourth time he tried to sideline Imamoglu, clearly he's afraid of Imamoglu,
03:36but this time under a judiciary which is completely under the control of the presidency
03:42or of the government, this time Erdoğan successfully made it and again sidelined Imamoglu.
03:50So is that why he singled out Imamoglu in particular, because he sees him as the biggest
03:55threat to him continuing on in power?
03:58Well, Imamoglu won the elections three times in Istanbul and as Erdoğan always says, who
04:05runs Istanbul runs the country.
04:08And clearly he's afraid of Imamoglu because Imamoglu is, first of all, he's younger, he's
04:14fresh, he's a fresh face.
04:16Even within the same party, indeed, he's not, I mean, there are some factions of the, within
04:23the CHP that really don't like, especially the older generation.
04:28He's a fresh face, he's able to speak to a broader audience than historically how the
04:35CHP was doing in the past.
04:38And the fact that he won the elections in 2019, then these elections were nullified
04:45by the Supreme Court, and then again, he won again.
04:50And last year he secured the second term as a mayor of Istanbul, clearly made him the
04:58national leader, the one who was going to run as the leader of the opposition.
05:04And Istanbul has a city with over 17 million inhabitants, so clearly there were, clearly
05:13I believe that Erdoğan is scared of such a popular figure such as Ekrem Imamoglu.
05:20Okay, so we're talking about what Imamoglu means to Erdoğan, but Erdoğan has been saying,
05:25I've got nothing to do with this, this is the judiciary.
05:28There are charges that they've detained Imamoglu on.
05:32What's the kind of official line, if you will, what are the police saying about Imamoglu
05:36and does any of it hold water?
05:40So first of all, we must say that there was a major judiciary reform in 2010, where basically
05:47the judiciary in Turkey was put under the, was put under the control of the Ministry
05:56of Justice under the Undersecretary for Justice.
06:00So clearly we cannot talk of an independent judiciary, first of all.
06:08And indeed, yes, it's true that Erdoğan is always presenting this as, it's something
06:14that has nothing to do with, there's nothing to do with us.
06:20And also he called, he praised the opposition to leave, to let the judiciary to work independently
06:28and freely.
06:31But this is not the case.
06:32In terms of the allegations, Imamoglu was first accused of corruption, bribery, and
06:39also surprisingly of cooperating, of being somehow sponsoring also the PKK, the terrorist
06:48group for the Turkish government, the terrorist organization, the Kurdish terrorist organization,
06:53the PKK.
06:55Which is, this is a bit of strange, because also in these days there were talks between
07:00Erdoğan, the government, and the Kurdish community.
07:04So this sounded a bit strange.
07:06Today the tribunal confirmed the allegation of corruption and bribery, but they did not
07:14confirm the allegation of cooperation, coordination with terrorist organization, with the PKK.
07:24This has some consequences, but yes.
07:26And in the end, these were very similar, for example, to what was moved against Selahattin
07:34Demirtas in 2016, another prominent leader, in that case from the Kurdish major party,
07:41the HDP.
07:42And it has been almost 10 years that Demirtas is still in prison, despite also the condemnation
07:51from the European Court of Human Rights to release him.
07:55Now, we'll come back to the PKK, but I wanted to touch on one of the things that first sparked
08:00this anger, which was in fact something a little bit more mundane, if you like.
08:05That's Imamoglu's degree being revoked.
08:08How does this strange move fit into it, and why is it now seem to escalate so much from
08:14that?
08:17So it's not the first time that Imamoglu is facing peculiar accusations.
08:24This was a few days before he got arrested for bribery and corruption.
08:31There was an issue about the fact that his degree could not be recognized by the Ministry
08:38for Education, because his first years were spent at a university in the Northern Republic
08:45of Cyprus, and there were some bureaucratic stuff.
08:49Because apparently to have a university degree is an official requirement to run for president.
08:59So this was the first strategy implemented by the government, and then the arrest.
09:08But it was not even the first time.
09:10A couple of years ago, he was also, after a first instance tribunal, actually sentenced
09:23him to jail.
09:24Then the sentence was suspended, because three years earlier he had called some public officers
09:32fools, and because of that offense also the tribunal in the first instance asked him to
09:43detain, to arrest Imamoglu.
09:45So it's not the first time that he's facing some, I would say, funny charges.
09:52Now this backlash in the streets, an almost backlash to this move, is this not something
09:57that Erdogan would have expected, would have planned for in at least some measure?
10:03For sure he was expecting this, and I think this was also the perfect time for doing this
10:11operation, for a couple of reasons.
10:13First of all, the fact that, as I said, he started some negotiations with the Kurds,
10:20and so I think he, it was a sort of a gamble.
10:24He bet that probably now the Kurds are not going on the streets protesting against him.
10:34There is a difference, and also the international context has changed.
10:40Europe now needs Turkey for migrants, for the situation in the Black Sea, and in Russia
10:47Trump is clearly not someone who is too interested in protecting civil liberties and freedom.
10:54But I think, I read somewhere that they're saying that probably this might be a new Gezi
10:59Park, the huge protest that was, that took place 10 years ago in Istanbul.
11:05The difference was that 10 years ago in the streets, in Taksim, in Istanbul, around Gezi
11:11Park there were so many communities, different communities.
11:16There were Alevi, Muslims, religious communities, there were minority groups, there were of
11:24course also the opposition parties, but there were football clubs joining.
11:28So it was a broad, wider protest.
11:31Now the risk, I think, also for the current leadership, the JHP, the CHP, they need to
11:37broaden this to other groups.
11:39Because even though it's massive, because CHP is the second biggest party in the country,
11:46it governs in Istanbul, Izmir, Ankara, but it needs to broaden this protest.
11:54Otherwise this will still be confined in a sort of, just in a party, in a party protest.
12:01And there are some rumors that even within the same party, maybe the older generation
12:07might be not too concerned about sidelining for good Ekrem İmamoğlu.
12:14All right Massimo, D'Angelo, that's all we've got time for unfortunately.
12:17So many angles we could go into here.
12:20Even the football angle is one of them, İmamoğlu and Erdoğan, both adept of course.
12:25Thank you so much for breaking down what we could in this time and speaking to France 24.