Journalists among more than 1,100 detained in Turkiye crackdown

ISTANBUL: Turkish police have detained more than 1,100 people, including journalists, since the arrest of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan´s main rival sparked the country´s worst unrest in years, a minister said on Monday.

The demonstrations began in Istanbul after Ekrem Imamoglu´s arrest last week and have since spread to more than 55 of Turkiye´s 81 provinces, sparking clashes with riot police and drawing international condemnation.

The popular 53-year-old has been widely seen as the only politician who could defeat Turkiye´s longtime leader Erdogan at the ballot box. In just four days he went from being the mayor of Istanbul -- a post that launched Erdogan´s political rise decades earlier -- to being arrested, interrogated, jailed and stripped of the mayorship as a result of a graft and terror probe.

On Sunday, he was overwhelmingly voted in as the main opposition CHP´s candidate for the 2028 presidential run, with some 15 million people casting their ballots in a show of support for Imamoglu.

Observers said it was the looming primary that triggered the move against Imamoglu, the main political rival of Erdogan who has dominated Turkiye´s politics since 2003, first as prime minister and then as president. His jailing drew sharp condemnation from Germany, which called it “totally unacceptable” as Greece said moves to undermine civil liberties “cannot be tolerated”.