Ekrem Imamoglu, the mayor of Istanbul and chief rival for President Recep Tayyip Erdogan in the 2028 election, was arrested on Wednesday in a move denounced by opposition leaders as a “coup against the next president.”
Imamoglu was just days away from formally receiving his party’s nomination for the presidency.
Imamoglu, 54, was among roughly a hundred people targeted by arrest warrants on Wednesday for corruption, bribery, racketeering, and aiding a known terrorist group — specifically the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), a Kurdish separatist group that Erdogan’s government regards as the greatest security threat to Turkey.
The PKK declared a ceasefire in early March at the urging of its jailed co-founder Abdullah Ocalan, after more than 40 years of fighting the Turkish government. Erdogan
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