Jailed Istanbul mayor faces new charge, 158 Gulen supporters held

ISTANBUL: Turkish prosecutors have filed a new charge against jailed Istanbul mayor, the Anadolu news agency reported on Tuesday, the latest in a string of accusations levelled against the leading opponent of the country’s hard-line president.

Also on Tuesday, police in a separate development arrested 158 members of the military suspected of links to Fethullah Gulen, who was accused of masterminding a failed 2016 coup, the public prosecutor’s office in Istanbul said.

Ekrem Imamoglu, 54, was arrested in March as part of a graft probe and on allegations of terror ties. He also faces several other investigations and charges, including allegedly threatening Istanbul’s prosecutor.

He has denied all charges against him, which supporters say are designed to prevent the popular politician from taking part in the 2028 presidential race.

In the latest charge filed against him, Imamoglu is accused of insulting two prosecutors during a March court appearance. If convicted, he faces up to four years in prison.

The jailed Istanbul mayor is widely seen as the main challenger to President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Interestingly, Erdogan too got his political start as Istanbul’s mayor.

Imamoglu was first elected mayor in 2019 and re-elected in 2024.

His arrest sparked demonstrations across the country in the worst street unrest since the 2013 Gezi Park protests, which spread across Turkiye and were brutally suppressed by police.

ARREST OF MILITARY PERSONNEL

Gulen, a cleric who died in 2024, was once a close ally of Erdogan before the two became bitter enemies. He relocated to the United States in 1999 and never returned.

The government accuses Gulen’s Hizmet movement of seeking to establish a “parallel state”.

Around 50 other members of the military were arrested in late May.

The prosecutor’s office said that a search was still underway for another 18 members of the military.

It said that the arrests mainly concerned the army.

Authorities have detained close to 26,000 people accused of belonging to the Hizmet movement since the 2016 failed coup.

More than 9,000 of them have been jailed, according to Turkish justice authorities.