“His words have no value. Ozgur Ozel thinks elections are run with the same mentality as a CHP congress. Democracy and CHP congress mentality are not the same thing,” AKP spokesperson Omer Celik said, calling Ozel’s remarks a “threat to democracy.”
Ozel on Saturday held a high-level CHP leadership meeting and threatened to call on citizens to take to the streets in large-scale demonstrations after three CHP mayors in southern Turkey were detained.
“You fear mass gatherings and demonstrations, so when I call people to the squares, you immediately take harsh security measures and ban them. Demonstrations are democracy. I know what day I will call people to the streets. Do not make me call people to the streets,” Ozel told reporters after the meeting.
Turkish authorities on Saturday detained the mayors of the southern cities of Antalya and Adana, as well as the southeastern Kurdish city of Adiyaman (Semsur) – all CHP members – on charges of fixing tenders through bribing mayors and senior municipal executives.
The arrests came as part of a wider investigation into alleged graft within CHP-led administrations, according to the state-owned Anadolu Agency.
The practice of dismissing elected officials has been ongoing for years. Dozens of mainly Kurdish mayors have been removed from their posts since 2016 and sentenced on terrorism-related charges for alleged ties to the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), which Ankara has designated a terrorist organization.
More recently, the AKP-led government has cracked down on CHP and other opposition mayors, detaining them largely on cases of alleged corruption.
On Thursday, a raid sparked by an alleged corruption case at the Izmir Metropolitan Municipality - a key CHP bastion - resulted in the arrests of 60 people, including former Izmir mayor Tunc Soyer and the head of CHP’s Izmir branch Senol Aslanoglu.
In March, Istanbul Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu was sacked from his position on charges of corruption. Considered the main rival of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan in the upcoming 2028 elections, his arrest sparked Turkey’s worst unrest in a decade, which in turn led to a massive crackdown on protests.
The dismissed mayors are replaced with state-appointed trustees.
