The leader of the opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP) Özgür Özel visited the arrested Istanbul mayor Ekrem İmamoğlu in the prison in Silivri (northwestern Turkey), where he met with other detained mayors, as well as journalist Fatih Altayli, who was arrested for insulting the Turkish president, the website “Habertürk“ reported, quoted by BTA.
After his visit to Silivri yesterday, which lasted nearly six hours, Özel said that he felt only “sadness and shame“ and described the Silivri prison as a “concentration camp”.
At the same time, the CHP leader stressed that those detained during the protests in support of İmamoğlu in March, most of whom are students and young people, should be released on September 3, as he said their detention period would expire then.
The mayor of Istanbul was detained on March 19 on corruption charges. On March 23, a court extended his detention, and a few days later the Istanbul municipal council removed him from office. The arrest of Imamoglu, who denies the charges, sparked a wave of protests described as the largest in Turkey since 2013. At the same time, Imamoglu was elected as the official candidate of the main opposition Republican People's Party (CHP) for the 2028 presidential election in Turkey.
After the initial arrests in March, Turkish authorities have carried out several operations to detain employees of the Istanbul Greater Municipality and individuals associated with them, as a result of which 103 people are currently in custody, and over 200 have been imposed with various measures of detention, the site reported. Haberler.