Istanbul, Turkey
Ekrem İmamoğlu, the mayor of Istanbul, was the strong candidate who could have defeated Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, the President of the Turkish Republic who has been in power since 2002. Loved by both the right and the left, he could have brought a breath of fresh air. But Erdoğan didn’t want any shadow over his government, so he found a solution by having İmamoğlu arrested.
Armed police officers showed up at Imamoglu’s door with a detention order and the Mayor described the scene in an essay published by the New York Times: “The move — four days before my party, the Republican People’s Party, held a primary for the next presidential race — was dramatic but hardly unexpected. It followed months of escalating legal harassment of me, culminating in the abrupt revocation of my university diploma 31 years after I had graduated. Authorities seemed to believe this would disqualify me from the race because the Constitution requires the president to have a degree in higher education. Realizing he cannot defeat me at the ballot box Erdogan has resorted to other means: having his main political opponent arrested on charges of corruption, bribery, leading a criminal network and aiding the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party, even though the charges lack credible evidence. I was suspended from my elected office over the financial charges”.
Imagine a country where none of the young people currently studying in high school or university have seen any government or policy other than the current government, which is the Justice and Development Party (AKP) and its policies. But what they have seen is how the country is moving towards one-man rule year after year, and how the economy and education are weakening day by day. In 2002, 1 dollar was equal to 1.30 Turkish liras, whereas now, as these lines are being written, 1 dollar is equal to 38 Turkish liras. In 2002, there were 95 universities in total, both private and public, while this number has nominally increased to 209 education has been hollowed out by opening universities on every corner to curry local favors.
Imagine a country where your freedom of expression is being taken away day by day. The comedy television program “Olacak O Kadar”, which first started airing in 1988, addressed and criticized many issues, including politics, and featured impersonations of famous politicians and artists of the time. The program, which ended in 2005, returned to the screens in 2009, but was terminated in 2010 because covered the problems of the AKP government and criticized Erdoğan.
Imagine a country where the constitution was changed to strengthen Erdoğan’s power. A referendum in 2017 changed the parliamentary system to a presidential system. In other words, the prime minister’s office was completely abolished and the president became the most powerful voice in the country. According to the parliamentary system, Erdoğan could only be elected President twice at most, but with the new system, he could run for a third term.
From 2004 to 2019, Erdogan’s AKP party won the Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality, but in 2019, the opposition party CHP, won for the first time in 19 years. Yet Erdoğan did not want to accept this. Winning Istanbul meant winning the whole of Türkiye. That’s why, upon AKP’s objection, the Istanbul elections were canceled on the grounds that “the chairmen and members of the ballot box committees who were not public officials were assigned to the election” and a second election was held. Imamoğlu, who won the first election by a margin of 13,729 votes over AKP candidate Binali Yıldırım, this time outpaced his rival by more than 800,000 votes in the second election. This vote difference was actually people speaking out against injustice.
In the 2024 local elections, the AKP, which had been the first party since 2002, failed to become the first party for the first time in 22 years. The CHP received the most votes across the country. People were calling for a new government.
The country was now focused on the presidential elections in 2028. İmamoğlu was the likely candidate of the CHP and was a strong one as he appealed to both the right-wing and the left-wing. Erdoğan imposed obstacles on Imamoğlu to get ahead of his potential rival. First, his university diploma, which is required to become President, was canceled and then Imamoğlu was detained on corruption and terrorism charges. This injustice brought the whole country to its feet. But this revolt was no longer just about Imamoğlu. This revolt was against the silencing, politics and polarization of the government for the past 23 years.
If you ask a young person in Italy, they will be able to say what they think. But young people in Türkiye are afraid, they don’t speak. They are worried:” If I say something against the government, something will happen to me, it will go on my record, I won’t be able to get a job…” But for the first time in years, I saw young people speaking out and criticizing Erdoğan, because preventing İmamoğlu from being elected as a presidential candidate was the last drop in the bucket. Thinking that if they don’t raise their voices against this, they will have to accept everything, the masses sought democracy by calling on the government to resign.
Streets that would have echoed with the voices of the people who would have peacefully demanded their rights had it not been for the police intervention, turned into hell with the police violence. The university student who was hit by a firecracker, the woman who was pushed while trying to return home, the woman who shouted “It hurts so much” to the police, and hundreds of other university students who were arrested just for participating in the protests… Among them was Berkay Gezgin, who created İmamoğlu’s slogan by saying “Everything will be beautiful” in line with what happened in 2019. Was this arrest a revenge against the owner of the slogan that continues to give hope to the people today?
As if it was not enough for Erdoğan to polarize the country so far, he was going to say to the people who wanted to protest legally on the streets, “We will not surrender this country to street terrorists, to the rascals.” He provoked the public and worsened the existing polarization between the more religious and more secular groups of the country since the pro-government media made it look as if mosques and cemeteries had been vandalized by the protesters when they had not.
Imagine a country that is technically “democratic” and “free”, but protests are banned, speech against the government is banned. In other words, journalism is banned. Journalists who tried to cover this process were arrested. Even foreign ones. Swedish journalist Joakim Medin was arrested for insulting the president, while BBC reporter Mark Lowen. was deported from Türkiye for “posing a threat to public order”.
There are only four channels in the country that give a voice to the opposition and do real journalism: Halk TV, Sözcü, Now, Tele 1. Sözcü TV was given a 10-day broadcast suspension for “inciting hatred and hostility among the public”. The 10-day broadcast suspension is the heaviest penalty before the license revocation in the country. In addition, Halk TV and Tele 1 were fined and program suspensions were imposed on them, and NOW TV was fined for “exceeding the limit of criticism” due to its coverage of the opposition. Is this the cost of real journalism in this country?
Have you ever heard of an opposition party in Italy saying, “Don’t go to Feltrinelli”? In Türkiye, as a result of these events, the CHP called on people to boycott certain stores. This was because these stores supported the government. These stores included D&R, one of the country’s most famous bookstores, and Espressolab, a café. This boycott is actually an indication of how polarized the country is. While uncertainties persist in the country, young people look to the future with hope for a more just, democratic and free Türkiye.
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