Anti-government protests enter their fifth day in Türkiye

CGTN Europe

Almost 1,200 people have been detained in Türkiye during five days of protests against the arrest of the mayor of Istanbul.  Ekrem İmamoğlu is being held in jail on corruption charges, which the opposition say are politically motivated.

Transcript

00:00As the protests are ongoing but in smaller crowds in front of the municipality today in Istanbul,

00:05but for the last five days mostly the protests have been taking place during evening hours.

00:10Last night again tens of thousands of people gathered in front of the municipality building

00:15in Istanbul and Özgür Özel, the main opposition leader as well as the wife of Ekrem İmamoğlu,

00:20Dilek, they addressed the crowd. Let me give you one quote from Dilek. She stated and I quote,

00:24if we all raise our voices together and stand by humanity and justice, we will achieve peace

00:29and equality for everyone. Now protests have been very tense and violent at times with protesters

00:35clashing with police forces on many occasions where police forces have used water cannons as

00:40well as tear gas. Almost 1200 people have been detained so far and they include nine journalists

00:47that have been detained on Sunday. The interior ministry also said 123 police officers were

00:53injured during the clashes between police forces and the protesters and the government has stated

00:59that they would not allow what the interior minister has called the terrorizing of the

01:03streets. Now university students have been very active during these protests and I've been told

01:08by Boğaziçi University students that they are planning to boycott academically and they will

01:13not be attending classes this week. There have been some international reactions to the arrest

01:17as well. France's foreign ministry has stated that the arrest is a serious attack on democracy

01:23and Germany stated that the arrest of Imamoglu is unacceptable. Despite this though Ekrem

01:29Imamoglu has still been nominated as a presidential candidate by the opposition.

01:37Well yes it is very clear that Ekrem Imamoglu is the strongest opponent to Erdoğan. He's

01:42leading Erdoğan in some of the polls and just like Erdoğan who also began his career as Istanbul

01:48mayor who later became prime minister and president, Imamoglu is basically following

01:51the same path. Now on Sunday the Republican People's Party voted in a primary election

01:56to vote Imamoglu as their next candidate. It was just a very symbolic vote. It's not binding

02:02but almost 50 million people voted for him. Some of them CHP and some of them non-members but it

02:07was a very strong show of solidarity and right now they didn't even put a second candidate on

02:13the ballot yesterday but if he's convicted on corruption trial then he would not be able to

02:18run against Erdoğan of course but then they would need to consider a second candidate potentially

02:24Ankara mayor Mansur Yavaş would be a very popular candidate still and so far Imamoglu has just been

02:30removed from his duty and a government-backed trustee has not been appointed to the Istanbul

02:35municipality but in a different case for example the district of Şişli, the mayor there has been

02:41charged on terrorism charges and arrested yesterday and today a government-backed trustee has been

02:46appointed to the Şişli district and that's what the CHP, the main opposition,

02:51is trying to avoid for the Istanbul municipality at all costs.

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