TURKIYE
Erdogan’s jailed top rival Imamoglu gets courtroom standing ovation as he arrives for trial
Ekrem Imamoglu, the jailed top rival to Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, on March 9 received a standing ovation from an Istanbul courtroom public gallery as he arrived to face the start of what is widely believed to be a politically motivated trial designed to prevent him running for the presidency.
Proceedings got off to a chaotic start. The presiding judge rejected a request from the deposed mayor of Istanbul Imamoglu to speak and momentarily adjourned the trial. That reportedly triggered cries of “Shame!” from many of those watching the trial.
Imamoglu, 55, was detained in a dawn police swoop on his home almost exactly a year ago, days after it became clear that Turkey’s main opposition party CHP was set to make the popular politician its presidential candidate, a move it went ahead with even after he was put in a cell.
He faces a raft of corruption charges that could lead to a prison sentence of more than 2,000 years. The indictment runs to almost 4,000 pages, accusing Imamoglu of running a criminal organisation that, in the words of Erdogan, is like“an octopus”.
Imamoglu pleads his innocence on all counts, arguing the charges are trumped up, absurd and spurious.
There are more than 400 co-defendants in the case.
The trial could last months or possibly even years, analysts were quoted as saying by the Financial Times.
“The whole matter is about Erdogan’s fear of Imamoglu,” CHP leader Ozgur Ozel told supporters at a rally last week.
Ozel and Imamoglu's wife, Dilek, sat side-by-side in the large courtroom.
"We are nervous and anxious," Dilek Imamoglu told reporters before the hearing started, as reported by Reuters. "We hope that they move to trial without detention. I last saw Ekrem last week, and he was in very good spirits."
All protests within a one-kilometre radius of the courtroom were banned. Supporters of Imamoglu therefore gathered at a distance, waving images of Imamoglu and those of more than a dozen other detained CHP mayors, according to AFP and DW.
Human Rights Watch said the trial represented “the culmination a 17-month campaign by the Turkish authorities against the main opposition party through criminal investigations, detentions, and other lawsuits targeting İmamoglu, other elected officials, and the party leadership, pointing to a concerted effort to remove Imamoglu from politics and discredit his party in ways that undermine democracy”.
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