Erdogan Jails Top Political Rival as Protests Sweep Across Turkey

Turkey descent into full-blown banana republic status continued on Sunday morning, when the country's police formally arrested President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s main political rival, a decision that will trigger even more market turmoil and protests across the country.

Ekrem Imamoglu, Istanbul’s mayor, was jailed on corruption charges days after being detained by police; he was also officially suspended as mayor of Istanbul, sparking an unprecedented political crisis in Turkey which may urgently require another fake coup by Erdogan as he slowly loses control.

The case - which the "Democratic" western media would be screaming about... if only it didn't involve the second largest army in NATO - has the potential to keep Imamoglu, who denies the charges, behind bars for years and prevent him from running against Erdogan in the next elections. He is the most prominent person to be ensnared in a recent wave of detentions and investigations against opposition figures.

Imamoglu’s detention on Wednesday came a day after authorities revoked his university diploma, which Turks need to run for the highest political office. The Istanbul court hearing the allegations on Sunday decided against a formal arrest on separate terror charges, but Imamoglu will remain in jail over the corruption probe.

Imamoglu was scheduled to be declared his party’s candidate on Sunday for the next presidential vote, scheduled for 2028. The cancellation of his university degree and decision by Turkish authorities to put him behind bars leave his political future unclear.

“We’ll together remove this black stain put on our democracy,” Imamoglu said in a statement shortly after his arrest. “I stand tall, I will never bow.”

He repeated the popular campaign slogan he used in municipal elections: “All will be good.”

His arrest suggests that Turkish authorities won’t be deterred by mass protests that have broken out in cities including Istanbul, Ankara and Izmir. Erdogan and his officials have accused the main opposition party of trying to sow chaos by calling people onto the streets. Of course, the opposition party wouldn't be trying to sow chaos if its leaders hadnt' been arrested.

The 54-year-old mayor’s popularity has risen nationally since 2019, when he defeated Erdogan’s handpicked candidate in local elections. He repeated his success at the ballot box against another Erdogan ally last year, helping the main opposition Republican People’s Party, known as the CHP, inflict an unprecedented defeat on Erdogan’s AK Party.

The arrest will surely trigger a renewed selloff of Turkish assets, which cratered last week and saw the lira plunge to a now record low. The country’s stocks and currency experienced the biggest drops globally while the government’s local-currency bond yields surged. That was despite state lenders selling at least $9 billion to try to calm markets.

In an attempt to contain the collapse, Turkey's central bank unexpectedly hiked a key overnight lending interest rate in an unscheduled meeting on Thursday. It convened executives from the nation’s top lenders on Sunday in another attempt to stem the fallout, Bloomberg reported citing people with direct knowledge of the matter.

Likely making matters even worse, the Turkish markets regulators has officially banned short-selling. Which, as we have seen in practice literally dozens of times across various moments of crisis... has never actually done anything to stop a market's descent (and in fact often makes matters worse).

Erdogan, who had long championed low interest rates to boost economic growth, swallowed his pride and brought back former ally Mehmet Simsek as finance minister. Simsek, who used to be a Merrill Lynch bond strategist, oversaw a period in which the central bank raised interest rates to 50%, the highest since Erdogan began ruling Turkey in 2003, and kept them there long enough to attract billions of dollars of inflows from foreign investors.

Inflation, still as high as 75% last May, was finally showing signs of slowing after years of hyperinflation pushed many Turks into poverty and pushed them away from Erdogan’s ruling party.

While some of Erdogan’s critics say he’s simply trying to weaken the opposition, a charge the government has denied, saying that Imamoglu’s detention has nothing to do with the president or his party others argue Erdogan is using the shifts in the global balance of power to maximize his gains at home: he has a good rapport with Trump, who he hopes to visit at the White House next month, and enjoys close ties with Russia’s President Vladimir Putin. More importantly, Turkey’s expanding military footprint makes Erdogan a key power broker in regional conflicts from Ukraine to Syria, and a useful ally for the European Union as the bloc frets about a possible US retreat.

The Turks taking to the streets over the past four days have defied various bans on protests. Istanbul’s governor placed restrictions on travel into and out of the city to stop the rallies from spreading.

Turkish authorities also immediately demanded that X bans over 700 accounts amid the unrest, to which Musk's company responded, the demand is "unlawful" adding that the company "will always defend freedom of speech".

For now Erdogan, the main focus of the anti-government protesters’ ire, appears unfazed. As was the case in 2013 during months of anti-government protests that began in Istanbul and spread throughout much of Turkey, the president has gradually become more confrontational.

“It’s a dead-end street,” Erdogan said after the main opposition party called on followers to organize mass protests. “The days when street terror set the direction for politics is now in the past, just like the old Turkey.”