What’s behind Turkey’s latest wave of arrests against opposition mayors?
The operations come as Ozgur Ozel’s newly formed party gains momentum.
ANKARA — Turkish police on Thursday detained Erdal Besikcioglu, mayor of Ankara’s Etimesgut district, marking the latest in a string of arrests of opposition mayors that an analyst says may be aimed at blunting the growing momentum of the country’s new main opposition party.
Besikcioglu was detained along with 52 others early Thursday over corruption accusations. The mayor who is widely known for playing the popular homicide detective Behzat C in the eponymous crime series ended 25 years of right-wing municipal rule when he delivered Etimesgut to the Republican People’s Party (CHP) for the first time in the 2024 local elections.
The CHP emerged as Turkey’s largest party nationwide in the 2024 local elections, handing President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s ruling Justice and Development Party its first national electoral defeat since coming to power in 2002 and wresting control of several long-standing strongholds held by the AKP and its nationalist allies.
Among them was Istanbul’s Uskudar district, home to Erdogan and his family’s Istanbul residences, where Sinem Dedetas delivered the CHP its first victory in 30 years in the 2024 local elections.
