An enormous crowd of protesters gathered in Istanbul on Saturday for a mass demonstration towards the arrest of opposition chief Ekrem İmamoğlu.
İmamoğlu was arrested final week on corruption prices and booted out of his workplace as Istanbul mayor. Extensively considered as the primary challenger to President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, İmamoğlu was on Monday formally nominated as a presidential candidate.
His arrest has sparked per week of protests within the nation. Turkish authorities have ramped up a crackdown towards the opposition, locking up greater than a thousand demonstrators and detaining journalists.
Özgür Özel, the chief of the primary opposition Republican Individuals’s Celebration (CHP) who organized Saturday’s demonstration, stated on X that there have been 2.2 million folks within the crowd. Özel informed French outlet Le Monde he deliberate to convene common Saturday rallies throughout the nation, with further protests organized in Istanbul each Wednesday.
The European Fee this week urged Ankara to “uphold democratic values.”
