The centrist mayor of Istanbul, Ekrem Imamoglu, has been sentenced to two years, seven months and fifteen days in jail, this Wednesday afternoon. The penalty also entails his disqualification, for contempt, for having called “idiots” those who forced the repetition of the 2019 municipal elections, in which he had won by just over one tenth.
Imamoglu will appeal the sentence in the Istanbul High Court of Justice and will be able to hold office until then and even stand in the presidential elections scheduled for June at the latest. The secular mayor of Turkey’s largest city is one of Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s potential adversaries.
Indeed, his prosecution will have the predictable effect of promoting him ahead of other potential candidates from the six-party opposition coalition. For example, the mayor of Ankara, from his own Republican People’s Party (CHP), Mansur Yavas, or the president of the formation himself, Kemal Kilicdaroglu.
Imamoglu, 52, has heard the sentence accompanied by his wife. The right-wing leader Meral Aksener has also wanted to be present and has hugged the mayor as a sign of support.
Imamoglu (CHP) was until 2019 an obscure district mayor, heir to a construction company, in a middle-class suburb. His victory, by barely a tenth, took away the country’s economic engine from the Islamists, after twenty-five years. Although according to some, President Erdogan was reluctant to repeat the elections, his son-in-law -then Minister of Energy- and the Minister of the Interior, forced a new appointment with the polls. In this, Imamoglu’s window multiplied, enlarging his figure.
This, in fact, has been deflating since then, while the mayor of Ankara, Yavas -from the extreme right- and Kiliçdaroglu, the incombustible party general secretary, with a reputation for Gandhian rectitude, won integers.
Judicial persecution can be a gift in the medium or long term for a still relatively young politician. It was at least in the case of Erdogan, jailed for four months for reading a poem at a rally when he was also mayor of Istanbul.
