ISTANBUL — A Turkish court on Wednesday delayed until
November a highly controversial trial that could see Istanbul’s popular mayor
banned from politics over a remark he made after beating
President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s ally in 2019 polls.
اضافة اعلان
Ekrem Imamoglu’s
fate is being watched closely for signs of judicial independence nine months
before a general election in which Erdogan will struggle to extend his
two-decade rule.
The 52-year-old
mayor is the most internationally recognized of the opposition leaders who
might run against Erdogan.
But a court could
keep him from seeking higher office — and possibly force him to give up his
post — as punishment for an offhand remark he made about Erdogan’s ruling party
in the aftermath of the heated mayoral race.
Imamoglu’s office accuses the ruling party of trying to “eliminate him
from the upcoming elections”.
The presiding
judge opened Wednesday’s session and immediately postponed hearings until
November 11 without an explanation.
The courtroom
itself was closed to reporters — an unusual step in Turkey.
The police also
sealed off the roads leading to the courthouse with metal fences to keep away
protesters in the highly anticipated trial.
“This trial should
not be taking place at all,” Imamoglu said after the hearings were delayed.
‘Suspicious votes’
Imamoglu was stripped of his
narrow March 2019 win over the ruling party’s candidate after Erdogan — who
launched his own career as Istanbul mayor and views the city as his second home
— refused to recognize the result.
Election officials reported discovering hundreds of
thousands of “suspicious votes” after Imamoglu had already been sworn into
office.
Their decision to call a re-run election for that
June sparked global condemnation and mobilized a groundswell of support for
Imamoglu that included former ruling party voters.
Imamoglu won the second election by more than
800,000 votes.
But the usually soft-spoken mayor let his lingering
bitterness at the ruling party spill over in November 2019.
“Those who cancelled the March 31 election are
idiots,” he told reporters at the time.
‘Insulting’
Erdogan’s ruling party
seized on the remark and sued the mayor for “insulting” public officials.
Prosecutors have asked for Imamoglu to be banned
from politics and jailed for 15 months — a relatively light sentence that
almost never sees people put behind bars.
Defense lawyer Kemal Polat told AFP the mayor would
immediately appeal against any ban and keep his job while the case wound its
way through the courts.
“Imamoglu can remain in his current position as
mayor until the end of the appeals process. He would not have to resign,” Polat
said.
Turkey’s Western allies accuse Erdogan of stacking
the courts with allies and using them to jail his rivals in the aftermath of a
failed military putsch in 2016.
Erdogan responded to the coup attempt with sweeping
purges that saw thousands jailed on “terrorism” and other charges.
Everyone from human rights leaders and civil
servants to opposition politicians — many of them from the main pro-Kurdish
party — were jailed in mass trials that instilled fear across swathes of
Turkish society.
Knockout
Turkey’s status as a
strategic member of
NATO and a Muslim-majority democracy in a volatile part of
the world has helped to preserve Erdogan’s ties with the West.
But the saga over the 2019 vote turned Imamoglu into
a global figure whose sentencing could raise the diplomatic stakes ahead of
next year’s vote.
The court case comes with Turkey’s fractured
opposition parties still arguing over which candidate to field against Erdogan
next June.
Imamoglu and
Mansur Yavas — elected mayor of Ankara in 2019 — have emerged as two of the
more popular opposition options because of their success at the ballot box.
The mayor himself appeared to the bracing for legal
battles in the months ahead that ruled him out of next year’s elections.
He threw his support on Tuesday behind the candidacy
of the main opposition CHP party’s leader
Kemal Kilicdaroglu.
“Today you are the main opposition leader, tomorrow you will
be in charge of the country,” he told Kilicdaroglu.
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