In March this year, Turkish police surrounded the Istanbul home of Ekrem İmamoğlu, the city’s elected mayor and the most credible opposition challenger to Erdoğan ahead of presidential elections due in 2028. İmamoğlu was detained alongside more than a hundred others on charges of corruption, money laundering and in a later addition to the indictment, espionage. The day before his arrest, Istanbul University had abruptly annulled his undergraduate degree, a procedural manoeuvre that, under Turkish law, would render him ineligible to stand for president. The message was unambiguous. Four days later, a court formally sent him to Marmara Prison, where he remains.
The response in the streets was immediate and remarkable. Millions took part in protests across Istanbul, Ankara and dozens of other cities. They were the largest demonstrations Turkey had seen in more than a decade. On the same day İmamoğlu was jailed, nearly fifteen million people, roughly one in four of Turkey’s eligible voters, cast ballots in the opposition CHP’s presidential primary in his support. The government described the protests as a movement of violence. Hundreds were detained.
By the time of writing, İmamoğlu has been in pre-trial detention for eight months. Appeals for his release have been rejected. His university degree annulment stands. At least eleven opposition district mayors across the country have been suspended or removed from office since his arrest, replaced by government-appointed trustees. In September, a cluster of independent television channels were seized. In October, new espionage charges were added to İmamoğlu’s indictment.
The international response has been largely muted. The Trump administration has treated the affair as an internal Turkish matter. European governments, wary of disrupting relations with a NATO ally, have been cautious. Germany’s decision to block the sale of forty Eurofighter jets to Turkey in April was one of the few concrete diplomatic responses. The Council of Europe and Human Rights Watch condemned the arrest in clear terms. It has not been enough.
The arc of what is happening in Turkey is not new, but it has accelerated sharply. In 2013, Dancing Turtle documented the Gezi Park protests in Istanbul through our short film Baslangıç. What began as a sit-in against the demolition of one of the city’s last green spaces became something much larger — a nationwide uprising against the increasingly authoritarian rule of President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, met with tear gas, water cannon and mass arrests. The film captured a moment of genuine popular resistance. Watching what has unfolded in Turkey this year, it is impossible not to think back to it.
Erdoğan’s government has spent more than a decade removing checks on its own power through the courts, the media, the universities and the ballot box. What is different now is the scale and the brazenness. An elected mayor of the country’s largest city, nominated as a presidential candidate by his party while in custody, sits in prison on charges that his own lawyers describe as a judicial fabrication. The Turkish people who filled the streets in March understood what was at stake. Twelve years on from Gezi, the fire is still burning.
