Protesters flock to mass opposition rally in Istanbul

ISTANBUL: Protesters gathered for a mass rally in Istanbul on Saturday at the call of Turkey’s main opposition CHP over the jailing of city mayor and top party figure Ekrem Imamoglu whose arrest has sparked the country’s biggest street demonstrations in over a decade.

The mass protests over Imamoglu’s March 19 detention have prompted a repressive government response that has been sharply condemned by rights groups and drawn criticism from abroad.

The rally in Maltepe on the Asian side of Istanbul comes on the eve of the Eid al-Fitr celebration marking the end of Ramadan, which starts Sunday.

Widely seen as the only Turkish politician capable of challenging President Recep Tayyip Erdogan at the ballot box, Imamoglu was elected as the CHP’s candidate for the 2028 presidential race on the day he was jailed.

Under a cloudless blue sky, protesters with posters of Imamoglu could be heard chanting: “Everywhere is Taksim, resistence is everywhere!” on board ferries crossing the Bosphorus to the Asian side of the city, an AFP correspondent said.

The slogans were referring to the city’s iconic Taksim Square, the epicentre of massive protests in 2013.

Opposition leader and CHP head Ozgur Ozel told France’s Le Monde newspaper he planned to make Saturday rallies a weekly feature in cities across Turkey, with others to be held in Istanbul every Wednesday. “We believe the arrests will slow down from now,” he told the daily, saying he was “ready to take the risk of spending eight to 10 years in prison if necessary. Because if we don’t stop this attempted coup, it will mean the end of the ballot box.”

The protests over Imamoglu’s arrest quickly spread across Turkey, with vast crowds joining mass nightly rallies outside Istanbul City Hall called by the CHP.