Meridian World Desk
A court in Istanbul sentenced the city’s deposed mayor, Ekrem Imamoglu, to two years in prison on 11 September for insulting a public official, in a ruling that also imposed a political ban and could ultimately cost him the mayoralty he has held since 2019.
Imamoglu, widely regarded as President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s strongest political rival, appeared by video link from Marmara Prison, the high-security facility outside Istanbul where he has been held since March 2025. The case centred on a four-year-old accusation that he had insulted an Istanbul district mayor. He had been acquitted twice before an appeals court ordered a retrial on procedural grounds, a process that culminated in the 25-month sentence handed down this week.
If the verdict becomes final after appeal, it would strip Imamoglu of his post as mayor of Turkey’s largest city, leaving the city council to choose a successor, and would bar him from political activity. Imamoglu is the CHP’s presidential candidate and has been the figure most consistently positioned as capable of challenging Erdogan, who has led Turkey since 2003 and served as president since 2014.
A widening legal campaign
The insult conviction is the latest step in a sequence of prosecutions that began in March 2025. Istanbul University annulled Imamoglu’s university degree on 18 March that year, a move that threatened his eligibility to run for president under Turkish law. The following day he was detained by police on corruption, extortion, money-laundering and terrorism-related allegations, triggering mass street protests across the country. He was formally arrested and jailed on 23 March 2025 — the same day the CHP, Turkey’s main secular opposition party, formally nominated him as its presidential candidate.
Prosecutors added an espionage charge in October 2025. In March this year, a mass corruption trial opened in Istanbul with Imamoglu named as lead defendant among more than 400 co-defendants, most of them current or former staff of the Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality. The prosecutor who led the original investigation into Imamoglu, Akin Gurlek, was appointed Turkey’s justice minister in February this year, a promotion cited by rights groups as evidence of the political stakes attached to the case.
Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International have both described the prosecutions against Imamoglu as politically motivated and procedurally flawed, arguing they are designed to remove him from politics and weaken the CHP ahead of future elections. Erdogan’s government has rejected any suggestion that the judiciary has been used as a political instrument, insisting the courts have acted independently.
European reaction
The ruling has sharpened concern in European capitals and institutions over the state of judicial independence in Turkey, a NATO member that Europe relies on as a partner on migration, trade and regional security. The German government, the European Parliament and the European Commission have each characterised the moves against Imamoglu as a serious setback for democracy in the country, echoing earlier condemnation from the Council of Europe when he was first detained in 2025.
Those institutions have not disputed Turkey’s right to prosecute criminal allegations, but their assessments reflect unease at the pattern the case has followed: an elected mayor removed from office, held in pretrial detention for well over a year, and now convicted in a case built on a charge that had twice failed to produce a conviction before being sent back for retrial.
For Brussels and Berlin, the episode complicates a relationship already strained by disagreements over migration policy, Turkey’s role in regional security and its standing as an accession candidate that has made little formal progress in years. European officials have repeatedly said that Turkey’s democratic trajectory bears directly on the depth of cooperation Europe is willing to offer, without specifying concrete measures tied to the Imamoglu case.
Imamoglu has denied the accusations against him and has called the latest verdict a scandal. He remains in detention at Marmara Prison as the case moves toward appeal, with his political future — and the question of who governs Istanbul — hanging on its outcome.