ISTANBUL: After his third night in custody, Istanbul Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu was to appear before prosecutors Saturday, just hours after hundreds of thousands hit the streets across Turkiye in a massive show of defiance.
\nIt was the third straight night that protesters had rallied against the arrest of Imamoglu \u2014 the biggest political rival of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, whose arrest early Wednesday sparked Turkiye\u2019s biggest street protests in more than a decade.
\nAfter an evening of clashes in Istanbul, Ankara and the western city of Izmir between protesters and riot police, who fired tear gas, rubber bullets and water cannon to disperse them, the security forces arrested 97 people, Interior Minister Ali Yerlikaya said.
\nAnd media reports said police had raided scores of homes overnight, although there was no immediate confirmation of the number detained.
\nThe 53-year-old mayor, who was arrested just days before the CHP was to name him their candidate for the 2028 presidential race, was speaking to police on Saturday morning in connection with the \u201cterror\u201d probe, party sources told AFP.
\nHe was then expected to appear before prosecutors at Caglayan courthouse at 1800 GMT to be questioned in both the graft and the terror probes, they said.
\nAlready named in a growing list of legal probes, Imamoglu \u2014 who was resoundingly re-elected last year \u2014 has been accused alongside six others of \u201caiding and abetting a terrorist organization\u201d \u2014 namely the banned Kurdish militant group PKK.
\nHe is also under investigation for \u201cbribery, extortion, corruption, aggravated fraud, and illegally obtaining personal data for profit as part of a criminal organization\u201d along with 99 other suspects.
\nHe was questioned by police for six hours Friday about the graft allegations, the party said.
\n\u201cMr Imamoglu denies all the charges against him,\u201d one of his lawyers, Mehmet Pehlivan said.
\n\u201cThe detention was aimed at undermining Mr.Imamoglu\u2019s reputation in the eyes of society,\u201d he wrote on X early on Saturday, saying both probes were \u201cbased on untrue allegations\u201d and \u201ca violation of the right to a fair trial.\u201d
\nDemonstrators across the country were due to rally again on Saturday night.
\nIn a message on X sent via his lawyers, Imamoglu said he was \u201chonored and proud\u201d of the demonstrators who hit the streets in more than 50 of Turkiye\u2019s 81 provinces, saying they were \u201cprotecting our republic, our democracy, the future of a just Turkiye, and the will of our nation.\u201d
\nAddressing the crowds outside City Hall in Istanbul on Friday night, Ozgur Ozel, who heads the main opposition CHP, said 300,000 people had joined the demonstration in defiance of a protest ban and a sharp warning from Erdogan that Turkiye would not tolerate \u201cstreet terror.\u201d
\nAs he spoke, the crowd cheered and applauded, waving flags and banners and chanting slogans like: \u201cDon\u2019t stay silent or it will be you next.\u201d
\nThe move against Imamoglu has hurt the Turkish lira and financial markets, with the stock exchange\u2019s BIST 100 index closing down nearly eight percent on Friday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
ISTANBUL: After his third night in custody, Istanbul Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu was to appear before prosecutors Saturday, just hours after hundreds of thousands hit the streets across Turkiye in a massive show of defiance. It was the third straight night that protesters had rallied against the arrest of Imamoglu \u2014 the biggest political rival of …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":78765,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-78751","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78751","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=78751"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78751\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":78766,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78751\/revisions\/78766"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/78765"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=78751"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=78751"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=78751"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}