Erdogan has been in power since 2003
New pressure on the Turkish opposition. The head of the first Turkish parliamentary opposition party in Ankara was arrested and detained on Sunday at the end of his police custody, in a corruption investigation, reported the local press.
Ümit Erkol, president of the provincial section of Ankara of the Republican People’s Party (CHP), was taken into custody at the same time as eight other people as part of an investigation conducted by the Izmir prosecutor’s office into alleged irregularities in a contract between the municipality of that city and a construction cooperative company, Izbeton, according to the news sites T24 and Birgün. According to the Izmir prosecutor, cited by these publications, the investigation focuses on “allegations of embezzlement, aggravated fraud, falsification of official documents, and failure to fulfill supervisory obligations”.
Mansur Yavas, the CHP mayor of Ankara, the Turkish capital, denounced this detention, pointing out in a message on X that Mr. Erkol is “a well-known figure, with a clear address and a precise public role”, adding that there is “no risk of evasion, no possibility of tampering with evidence”. “If a warrant is issued in these circumstances, then we cannot talk about justice,” he insists.
The Turkish opposition has been under pressure since the arrest and detention of Istanbul mayor Ekrem Imamoglu in March 2025, who has been on trial since March 9 for corruption, with 413 co-defendants. Ekrem Imamoglu, designated by the CHP as its candidate in the presidential election scheduled for May 2028, was seen as the favorite and the only one capable of defeating President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, in power since 2003 and re-elected in 2023. Four mayors of CHP municipalities, including the one in Bursa (north-west), the fourth largest city in the country, which was taken back by the opposition in 2024, have been arrested since the trial began.
