Turkey faces demonstrations, a flight of investors after the arrest of the opposition chief

The besieged economy of Turkey is expected to bear more turbulence and theft of investors while demonstrations broke out against a multitude of very controversial arrests carried out by the government of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

The demonstrations are in response to the arrest of the mayor of Istanbul, Ekrem Imamoglu, one of the main opponents of Erdogan, just a few days before he was appointed candidate of his party to the presidency.

The Turkish markets have flowed the most in the world on Wednesday after the news of the detention of Imamoglu broke out, the LIR reaching a record hollow against the dollar. This led the Central Bank of Turkey to sell a record amount of currencies of nearly $ 10 billion, according to banking calculations Quoted by Reuters To support the besieged currency, which is down 15% over the dollar in the last year and down 83% in the past five years.

Imamoglu, who won the most populated city mayor in Turkey in April 2024, was arrested for accusations such as terrorism and organized crime, whom he and his supporters reject. Prosecutors also published mandates for 100 other people, including journalists, businessmen and members of the Republican Popular Party (CHP) of Imamoglu, which is the main Turkish opposition group. CHP leaders call for arrest a “coup d'etat”.

The office of the Governor of Istanbul imposed prohibitions on protests as well as metro and road closures, while access to social media and on the internet in the country remains severely limited. In response, the demonstrators gathered in the city's barricades and university campuses to express their anger.

CNBC contacted the Türkiye Interior Ministry to comment. Government representatives deny that arrests are politically motivated and insist that the courts operate independently.

In a traditional article by Google on the social media platform X Thursday, the Turkish Minister of the Interior, Ali Yerlikaya, said that the authorities had detained 37 people for publications on social networks which she considered “provocative” and had fallen under the classification of “the incentive to commit a crime”, according to a translation of Google of the post.

The 53 -year -old popular mayor, who won his post by a landslide in the spring of 2024 local elections, was considered the most serious rival of Erdogan for the Turkish presidency. The CHP had to hold a primary election on March 23, during which Imamoglu was to emerge largely as a candidate for the group's presidential election.

Critics of arrests say that it is the clearest violation of democracy to date by the government of Erdogan.

“Turkey is already in decline, but it is a free political fall,” said Arda Tunca, independent economist and consultant based in Istanbul, told CNBC. “Today is history and a new dimension in the escape of Turkey from democracy.”