Is the Trial of Erdogan’s Top Rival More About Corruption or Politics?

Ben Hubbard, Gulsin Harman, Safak Timur

New York Times

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey issued a cryptic warning to his political opponents.

In a speech early last year, he mentioned an opposition politician arrested on corruption charges and added, “The bigger radish is in the sack,” a Turkish idiom meaning that something worse is on the way.

Soon after, Ekrem Imamoglu, the mayor of Istanbul and Mr. Erdogan’s top political rival, was arrested on corruption charges. Since then, hundreds of other opposition party officials and associates have been detained as part of an investigation into what the government calls a criminal organization headed by Mr. Imamoglu as the mayor of Turkey’s largest city. The resulting trial opens in Istanbul on Monday.

The government has portrayed the trial as necessary to punish criminals and stop self-dealing. But opposition party members, legal scholars and rights groups see a different motivation: to prevent Mr. Imamoglu from challenging Mr. Erdogan in Turkey’s next presidential election.

“The trial is first and foremost an attempt to eliminate a very strong political rival,” said Sinem Adar, the director of the Center for Applied Turkey Studies in Berlin, a research group.

In a 3,800-page indictment, prosecutors accused Mr. Imamoglu of heading a vast criminal operation from inside Istanbul’s city hall to enrich himself and finance his presidential ambitions. At the trial, he and 401 other defendants face charges including bribery, extortion and money laundering.

For Mr. Imamoglu, who was removed from office last year, prosecutors are seeking a prison sentence of more than 2,000 years.

He has denied any wrongdoing. Some of his co-defendants have testified against him, a key component of the government’s case.

Turkish officials deny the trial is politically motivated, saying the judiciary is independent of political pressure.

The government’s critics say there are clear signs of official meddling.

They point to the timing of Mr. Imamoglu’s arrest, just days before his party designated him its presidential candidate. The prosecutor who led the investigation served previously as Mr. Erdogan’s deputy justice minister; after the indictment was prepared, Mr. Erdogan promoted him into his cabinet, as justice minister.

 

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, shown last month, has been Turkey’s predominant politician for more than two decades. His base praises him for building the economy; his critics call him an autocrat.Credit…Umit Bektas/Reuters

Throughout the investigation, details were regularly leaked to pro-government news outlets, and Mr. Erdogan himself praised the inquiry.

In a speech last June, he said the former mayor’s colleagues were testifying against him and suggested that the investigation would doom his political ambitions.

“As we keep hearing what they are saying about this person they deemed worthy of ruling the country only two years ago, we thank God,” he said.

Turkey experts said that some forms of corruption are common in municipalities across the country but that the intense focus on Mr. Imamoglu appears to be driven by more than an effort to ensure good governance.

Ms. Adar, of the Center for Applied Turkey Studies, said that even if there was evidence against Mr. Imamoglu, “The person should have been presumed innocent until proven guilty, but there was no attempt to do that.”

Akin Gurlek, the justice minister, did not respond to an interview request nor to written questions about his investigation.

In a televised interview last month, he said that the gravity of the allegations forced him to investigate and that the status of the suspects did not influence his work.

“As prosecutors, we do not consider who those people are, their positions or whether they are mayors or not,” he said. “We look for crimes.”

Mr. Imamoglu said he doesn’t trust the courts.

“Everything I have experienced to date in the cases filed against me and throughout their hearings indicate that I will not receive a fair trial,” he told The New York Times from jail in written responses to questions.

His presidential bid remains legitimate under the law and “in the eyes of the nation,” he wrote.

The trial comes as Mr. Erdogan is flying high internationally but facing domestic challenges.

President Trump considers Mr. Erdogan an important ally and has made it clear that he is not concerned with how he runs Turkey. European officials who might have previously criticized moves they saw as autocratic now prioritize cooperation with Mr. Erdogan in facing threats from the wars in Ukraine and Iran.

Inside Turkey, persistently high inflation has angered voters, and Mr. Erdogan’s Justice and Development Party fared poorly in local elections in 2024, when the opposition Republican People’s Party, known as C.H.P., swept Turkey’s largest cities.

 

Shopping in Istanbul last fall. Turkey’s persistently high inflation has angered many voters, just one of the domestic problems that Mr. Erdogan faces.Credit…Dilara Senkaya/Reuters

That vote gave Mr. Imamoglu his third victory for mayor of Istanbul over Mr. Erdogan’s candidates.

The former mayor’s supporters say his electoral successes — and polls suggesting he could beat Mr. Erdogan — led to efforts to block his path.

“This was fully politically motivated and designed by people who are very loyal to Erdogan,” said Serkan Ozcan, the deputy head of C.H.P. “They started this trial just to ban Imamoglu from politics because they saw that he is going to run and win.”

Mr. Erdogan, 72, has been Turkey’s predominant politician for more than two decades, serving as prime minister since 2003 and president since 2014. His base praises him for building Turkey’s economy and international standing; his critics accuse him of using autocratic means to maintain power.

Turkey’s next presidential election is scheduled for 2028, when Mr. Erdogan’s five-year term ends. The Constitution would then bar him from serving again.

But if the Constitution is amended or Parliament calls an early election, he could run for another term. Most experts expect that he will.

Mr. Imamoglu, 54, won an upset victory against Mr. Erdogan’s candidate to become mayor of Istanbul, Turkey’s economic capital, in 2019. The election board called for a redo, which Mr. Imamoglu also won, by an even larger margin, making him a rising star in the political opposition.

Since before his arrest last March, he has faced a series of legal and administrative procedures that his supporters say aim to hobble him.

The day before his arrest, his alma mater suddenly annulled his 31-year-old undergraduate diploma. That could bar him from the presidency, as Turkish law requires the head of state to have completed higher education.

In other cases, he faces charges including insulting election officials and Mr. Gurlek, the prosecutor who indicted him; document forgery related to his diploma; and bid rigging while serving as an Istanbul district mayor. Final guilty verdicts in some of these cases would temporarily bar him from politics.

Mr. Imamoglu has denied wrongdoing in all cases.

His lawyers say more than a dozen of the judges assigned to hear these cases have been reassigned, sometimes before delivering verdicts, other times after ruling in the former mayor’s favor.

 

Mr. Imamoglu speaking in Istanbul in 2024. He had been a rising star in the Turkish opposition and now tries to keep his political career alive from jail.Credit…Yasin Akgul/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

Hasan Sinar, a criminal law professor at Altinbas University in Istanbul, called such reassignments “very uncommon.”

“It doesn’t sound like a natural criminal process,” he said. “When it comes to Imamoglu, all the judges have to obey the political agenda of the government.”

From jail, Mr. Imamoglu wrote: “Those who fear competing with me may attempt to keep me imprisoned. They may attempt to invalidate my diploma.”

In the election, however, they would face not just him, he wrote, but “the collective will that made this candidacy possible.”

Now, he wrote, he is kept alone in a 130-square-foot cell. He shaves and exercises daily and is allowed one hour per week to walk outside and another to see his family. He has no access to computers or other devices but can talk on the phone for 10 minutes per week.

He works 12 hours a day, he wrote, following local and international news, reading books and reports and meeting with his lawyers.

He also collaborates with his presidential campaign office, he wrote, to formulate the “programs that we will apply when we come to power.”