Turkey is getting closer to the end of Erdogan endlessly as the largest held rival

By Nadeen EbrahimCnn

Supporters of the mayor of Istanbul Ekrem Imamoglu participate in a demonstration against his detention on a corruption investigation in Istanbul on March 19, 2025.
Photo: AFP / Kemal Aslan

Analysis: Turkish police have owned the strongest rival of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, a decision which, according to experts, aims to withdraw all possible suitors before the next presidential election and to further stretch their reign.

The mayor of Istanbul, Ekrem Imamoglu, was detained as part of corruption and terrorism surveys in a movement that the opposition condemned as politically motivated. A hundred others linked to the mayor have also been detained, notably the elected mayors of the district of Istanbul Resul Emrah Sahan and Murat Calik.

The wave of arrests comes after a repression of several months against the opposition in Türkiye. In November, Human Rights Watch castigated Erdogan for withdrawing several elected mayors from the opposition and replacing them with mayors committed by the government.

Murat Somer, professor of politics at the University of Ozyyegin in Istanbul, said that the detention of the mayor of Istanbul was part of a political transformation that Turkey suffered.

Erdogan's Turkey goes from an “autocratic regime open to a Russian or airy style, entirely authoritarian, autocratic regime,” said Somer to CNN, adding that it seems to be a “very well planned and orchestrated effort that started last fall”.

The mayor of Istanbul Ekrem Imamoglu listens during a rally in Izmir, Turkey, on March 8, 2025.
Photo: AFP / Berkcan Zengin

It remains to be seen if the opposition will be able to survive this effort.

Imamoglu said he would not back down.

“We are faced with enormous intimidation,” said the double mayor in a video filmed from his dressing room shortly before his arrest. “But I will not go back. I love you all. I confide in people. I will stand up,” he said in the video that was published on Wednesday on X.

In a separate message, the wife of Imamoglu Dilek said that “those who do not want to lose in the following polls have made this movement”, referring to Erdogan and his camp.

'Too much threat'

Imamoglu, one of Turkey's most popular political figures, was the main threat to Erdogan.

Erdogan prolonged his reign in a third decade after winning a presidential knife election in 2023, obtaining a second term. His party, however, did not obtain the key city of Istanbul, where he was mayor before becoming president, which remains in the hands of his Imamoglu rival and the main party of the Republican People (CHP).

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan
Photo: AFP

After winning a second term, Erdogan was determined to take over the city in March 2024 municipal elections, which saw Imamoglu emerging victorious by 51.14% of the votes, defeating the candidate of the AK justice and development party). He was elected mayor of Istanbul in 2019.

“Erdogan sees in Imamoglu a key challenger,” a key challenger told CNN, Soner Capagay, a main scholarship holder and director of the Turkish research program at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, based in DC.

The two leaders are from the Côte de la Mer Noire, and just as Erdogan used its mayor of Istanbul in the 1990s to convince voters that he can manage Turkey well, “Imamoglu has created the same brand,” he said. “It was too much a threat to Erdogan and he decided to bite him into the egg.”

Imamoglu is on a trajectory to one day direct the country. Some polls had declared that if he presented himself to the presidency against Erdogan, Imamoglu would obtain more votes.

“The Imamoglu is extremely popular,” said Somer adding that Imamoglu has been particularly qualified to attract support, even in camps traditionally pro-Erdogan.

“It is of course extremely threatening towards Erdogan,” said Somer.

His arrest intervened just a few days before the CHP did not hold a primary election, where the Imamoglu was to be chosen as presidential candidate for the next series of presidential surveys.

He also occurs after the University of Istanbul said on Tuesday that it had canceled the imamoglu diploma on irregularities. Applicants must have a university degree to present themselves to the presidency in Türkiye.

In response to its arrest, the CHP called for demonstrations by the party's head office and provincial offices across the country. The chief of the CHP, Ozgur Ozel, described the detention of imamoglu “an attempted coup against our next president”.

Meanwhile, Erdogan's allies defended the repression.

The ally and leader of the Erdogan Nationalist Movement (MHP) party, Devlet Bahceli, rejected the appeal of the detention of Imamoglu a coup, adding that the call to the streets to protest his arrest is “the political corruption which has become crazy and lost its level of reason and morality”.

Bahceli also insisted that the Turkish judiciary is “independent, impartial and objective”.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan meets Russian President Vladimir Putin in Tehran in 2022.
Photo: Mostafa Dreams

A third presidential term?

Experts say that Erdogan is probably trying to extend his rule to a third term.

According to the Constitution, the presidents are only allowed to operate for two terms. To get around this rule, Erdogan will have to either modify the constitution or call the early elections.

To change the constitution, Erdogan will need the support of the CHP, the second largest party in the Grande National Assembly of Turkey after the AK party of Erdogan, with more than 130 members of the Parliament. The AK party has more than 270 seats. A constitutional amendment requires a two -thirds vote in the Parliament.

Erdogan previously modified the Constitution in a 2017 referendum which transformed the parliamentary system of Turkey into a powerful executive presidency, granting Erdogan of the sweeping powers.

The president can also call the first elections, which would grant him at least five more years of rule, because his second term would be incomplete. In order to present itself to the presidency during the first elections, the Parliament will have to make the appeal, according to article 116 of the Constitution.

But any election that includes opposition with Imamoglu because his head may see Erdogan's defeated experts.

“If they allow the opposition to participate fully in the elections, they will lose. They realize that,” said Somer, adding that Erdogan is probably looking to eliminate the opposition before calling the first elections and changing the Constitution, that Somer said that Erdogan prepared by the co-operation of politicians to support the idea.

Captagay said that Erdogan can however miscademnate, because “the arrest of your first opponent never works well”.

Erdogan himself was arrested in 1999 by the time regime. He then won massive popularity.

“The arrest of Imamoglu could increase sympathies for him and can translate him as a political hero known on a national scale, just as Erdogan's arrest did it for him in 1999,” said Captagay, adding that Erdogan may have inadvertently strengthened his political enemy.

Cnn's gul guyensuz, sidhu sidhu

-Cnn