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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