While Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan welcomed NATO leaders to Ankara on Wednesday, his most prominent political opponent was across the country in a courtroom, fighting serious corruption allegations.
Istanbul Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu, a member of the Republican People’s Party — known as the CHP — was taken into custody back in March 2025. Over the past two years, hundreds of CHP members and elected officials have also been detained in what critics describe as a deliberate effort to dismantle Turkey’s largest opposition party.
The court proceedings took place in a specially constructed facility adjacent to the Silivri prison complex on the outskirts of Istanbul. Imamoglu pushed back against the judge’s decision to bar him from attending hearings for nearly a week, citing what he called “disruptive behavior.” He argued that his legal rights had been ignored in the process.
Addressing the presiding judge directly, Imamoglu challenged the optics of the situation. “How can you explain to world leaders at the NATO summit, in Turkey, in Ankara, the silencing of Ekrem Imamoglu?” he said, according to the opposition-aligned Cumhuriyet newspaper.
Shortly after his arrest, the CHP chose Imamoglu as its candidate for a future presidential run. He is broadly viewed as the strongest threat to Erdogan’s grip on power, which has now lasted 23 years. Adding to the political turmoil, a court order in May nullified the CHP’s 2023 congress and removed the party’s leadership.
Turkish authorities maintain that the country’s courts operate independently and without political influence.
Wednesday’s proceedings centered on the most serious case Imamoglu is facing. Prosecutors allege he used his position as head of the Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality to run a criminal organization engaged in widespread corrupt activity. He is confronting 142 charges in total, including allegations that he built what prosecutors dubbed the “Imamoglu criminal organization for profit” dating back to 2015, when he served as mayor of Istanbul’s Beylikduzu district.
The indictment, spanning 3,900 pages, claims the scheme was designed not only to financially enrich Imamoglu and his 413 co-defendants through bid rigging and bribery, but also to funnel money into his political rise within the CHP — a climb that ultimately led to his presidential candidacy.
Responding to the charges on Wednesday, Imamoglu insisted that prosecutors had failed to back up their claims, saying “not a single piece of evidence or document … Not a single audio recording could be presented” to support their case.
Should he be found guilty, the combined potential prison time he faces would exceed 2,000 years.
The court announced that the submission phase will wrap up Thursday, leaving Imamoglu just a single day to lay out his defense.
In a separate development Wednesday, the Bakirkoy Prosecutor’s Office in Istanbul announced a new criminal investigation into Imamoglu, accusing him of “threatening a public official” based on remarks he made during the hearing. Specifically, prosecutors cited his statement that he would “judge those who prepared the indictment” against him.
On Monday, the 62nd session in the corruption case was scheduled at the same time as two other separate hearings involving Imamoglu — one concerning allegations that he fraudulently obtained his college degree in 1994, and another accusing him of political and military espionage.
The European Parliament’s rapporteur for Turkey, Nacho Sanchez Amor, drew attention to the overlap in timing with the NATO gathering. “These hearings are happening today because there’s a NATO summit in Ankara,” he told reporters gathered outside the courthouse Monday. “It’s statistically impossible that there can be three hearings for the same person for three cases on – a great surprise – the same day that attention is on Ankara with another summit.”
Imamoglu first rose to national prominence in 2019 when he delivered Istanbul to the CHP, wresting Turkey’s largest city away from Erdogan’s Justice and Development Party — known as the AKP — and its predecessor parties for the first time in a quarter century.
He successfully held onto the mayoral seat in the 2024 local elections, during which the CHP posted further notable gains against the AKP across the country.
Turkey’s next scheduled presidential and parliamentary elections are set for 2028, though the government has the option to call for earlier elections.
