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.
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