Sawt Falasteen - 'Defect or be jailed': Turkey opposition mayors face new threat

Turkey's main opposition, the Republican People's Party (CHP), is currently battling a string of what observers say are politically-motivated lawsuits and arrests targeting its mayors and leadership.

The crackdown began after the CHP won a major victory over President Recep Tayyip Erdogan's ruling AKP in the March 2024 local elections.

But alongside the lawsuits, there has been a growing number of defections to AKP, with nearly 60 opposition-led municipalities switching allegiance to the ruling party over the past 18 months.

The highest-profile defection was in August when Ozlem Cercioglu, CHP mayor of Aydin near the southwestern resort city of Izmir, went over to AKP with another five district mayors in a move announced by Erdogan himself.

The CHP says it is part of a broader intimidation campaign that began a year ago and has seen at least 11 of its 26 mayors in Istanbul province arrested over alleged "terror ties" or "graft", among them Ekrem Imamoglu, CHP's presidential candidate and the only politician believed capable of beating Erdogan at the ballot box.

His arrest in March triggered Turkey's worst street protests since 2013.

"Join AKP or you'll go to prison -- that's the message," said CHP leader Ozgur Ozel in August, his words echoed by Hasan Mutlu, mayor of Istanbul's Bayrampasa district, who was arrested in mid-September on graft allegations.

"The only reason for my arrest and removal from office is my refusal to give in to pressure to join AKP," he wrote on X.

- 'Force to resign' -

"Mayors know that you don't need to have committed a crime to be jailed in Turkey," said CHP's vice president Murat Bakan.

"They force people to falsely testify against them. Some stronger mayors, who don't back down easily, resist. But others, out of fear, agree to switch rather than end up in prison," he said.

"AKP's main motivation is to keep its grip on power and deprive us of opportunities in local governance which they believe brings us voter support. They want to take over as many town halls as possible."

Such a strategy was used after the 2019 local elections when more than 50 mayors from the pro-Kurdish HDP, now DEM, were removed and replaced by state-appointed AKP administrators for alleged Kurdish militant ties.

CHP officials were also under pressure to change the makeup of local councils, notably where the party held a narrow majority.

Sitki Keskin, a local councillor in Cukurova near the southern city of Adana whose mayor was jailed in July, said AKP officials were exerting a lot of pressure at council meetings.

"In some areas where mayors have been arrested, councillors have been forced to resign and cede their majority to AKP, letting them decide who's appointed deputy mayor," he told AFP, saying Adana city council had managed to resist such pressure.

- 'Resorting to repression' -

Political scientist Sinem Adar of the Berlin-based Centre for Applied Turkey Studies, said the aim was "to neutralise the opposition".

"With these defections, the AKP is also trying to give the impression that the party is still popular, since these mayors are leaving the CHP to join it. But the AKP's popularity has been steadily declining since 2015," she told AFP.

Last month Erdogan said those who had switched "believe AKP is the ideal party to serve the nation", expressing confidence there would be "more defections".

But CHP's Bakan said the strategy was "not working. Our resistance is consolidating the whole opposition."

Adar said the "war on several fronts" against the opposition was unlikely to end any time soon.

"AKP has reached the limits of its capacity for political reform so now it's resorting to repression. If free elections were to take place, AKP would have very little chance of winning," she said.

"As long as the CHP continues to resist, this confrontation is likely to become even more complicated."

Q.Bulbul--SF-PST