New Delhi: Massive protests erupted in Turkey after court on Sunday (March 23) jailed Istanbul Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu, pending trial on corruption charges.
The court order to jail Imamoglu, who is the main political rival of Turkey President Tayyip Erdogan’s resulted in the country’s biggest protests in more than a decade, reported Reuters.
Earlier, the main opposition party, European leaders and hundreds of thousands of protesters had criticised the actions against Imamoglu as politicised and undemocratic.
“We will rip away this coup, this dark stain on our democracy, all together,” he said.
Imamoglu has been charged with “establishing and managing a criminal organisation, taking bribes, extortion, unlawfully recording personal data and rigging a tender”.
Imamoglu has denied the charges and called for nationwide protests.
While the government has denied that investigations are politically motivated and maintained that courts are independent, nearly 15 million Republican People’s Party (CHP) members and non-members took to the streets across the country endorsing Imamoglu as its candidate in a future presidential vote.
After Imamoglu received the jail sentence, crowds gathered near Istanbul’s city hall by early evening on Sunday for a fifth night and waved Turkish flags and chanted in front of a row of riot police, reported BBC.
Police officers were seen firing water cannons at some protesters and using pepper spray.
In total, rallies took place in at least 55 of Turkey’s 81 provinces, or more than two-thirds of the country.
