Ankara (TDI): Police have detained more than 1,100 protesters since the arrest of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s main rival triggered some of Turkiye worst unrest in years.
The protests started in Istanbul after Ekrem Imamoglu’s arrest last week and have since spread to over 55 of Turkiye’s 81 provinces, sparking clashes with riot police.
The popular 53-year-old has been widely considered as the only politician who could defeat Turkiye’s longtime leader Erdogan in the elections.
In just four days he went from being the mayor of Istanbul to being arrested, interrogated, imprisoned and stripped of the mayorship as a result of a corruption and terror probe.
On Sunday, he was overwhelmingly voted in as the main opposition CHP’s candidate for the next presidential run, with the ballot — that was opened beyond the party’s 1.7 million members — securing fifteen million votes.
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A party spokesperson on Monday confirmed his election as the party’s candidate.
Early on Monday, police arrested ten journalists. It said most of them were covering the mass protests outside City Hall, where tens of thousands rallied late Sunday, a move criticized by Imamoglu’s wife.
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“What is being done to members of the media and journalists is a issue of freedom. None of us can remain silent about this,” Dilek Kaya Imamoglu said in a statement.
