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deputy chairman Onursal Adiguzel wrote on Twitter.
Imamoglu took office as Istanbul mayor on April 17, after waiting his mandate for seventeen days following March 31 polls, but had to step down on May 6 while an interim mayor takes over. Imamoglu won the mayorship by the slim margin of towards 14,000 votes in a city of 15mn people (with 10mn eligible to vote) that accounts for around a third of Turkey’s GDP. The mayor of Istanbul oversees a budget estimated this year at Turkish lira (TRY) 24bn ($3.9bn).
More and more menacing. The AKP’s campaign for a revote has also become more and more menacing for its opponents, with around 100 polling station workers called in for questioning as suspects. Also, Istanbul’s chief prosecutor alleged that dozens of officials involved in administering the vote were linked to US-based Islamic preacher Fethullah Gulen, whom Ankara accuses of masterminding the failed coup attempt against Erdogan almost three years ago.
Anyone doubting the severity of the decline in Turkey’s democratic credentials need only look up a series of alarming reports issued in the past year by rights watchdogs. In early April, Human Rights Watch (HRW) released a report exploring how Turkey has arbitrarily jailed hundreds of lawyers and put them on trial in the aftermath of the botched coup attempt of July 2016. “The move is part of the Turkish authorities’ major assault on the right to a fair trial and on the role of lawyers in the administration of justice,” HRW said in a press release announcing the publication of the 56-page report, “Lawyers on Trial: Abusive Prosecutions and Erosion of Fair Trial Rights in Turkey”. Turkey, meanwhile, is seen as “Not Free” by the Freedom House watchdog and, for three straight years, it has been listed by the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) as the world’s biggest jailer of journalists. In the latest rankings on the World Justice Project’s (WJP’s) Rule of Law Index, Turkey sunk eight places to 109th of 126 nations.
Indictment prepared against Istanbul head of main opposition party for insulting Erdogan and terrorist propaganda. Turkish prosecutors have prepared an indictment accusing the Istanbul head of the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP) of insulting the president and terrorist propaganda on Twitter, a Turkish official announced on May 23. The news concerning Canan Kaftancioglu, known as an outspoken critic of the Erdogan administration, will add to tensions in the run-up to the June 23 Istanbul mayoral election revote. The results of the original election at the end of March, for which Kaftancioglu prominently campaigned on behalf of the eventual shock winner, the CHP’s Ekrem Imamoglu, were annulled after Erdogan’s ruling AKP party complained of alleged polling station irregularities. The AKP has regularly attacked Kaftancioglu since her appointment as a CHP provincial head last year. The indictment accuses Kaftancioglu of insulting the Turkish government, the president and public servants, inciting hatred and enmity, and distributing propaganda for a terrorist organisation. The accusations are mostly based on tweets posted between 2012 and 2017, the official said. The indictment, following an investigation that has lasted more than a year, asks for a jail sentence of between two-years-and-nine-months and 11 years, he added. In the indictment Kaftancioglu is cited as saying in a statement to the prosecutor’s office that her tweets were within the legal bounds of freedom of expression and criticism, according to the official. In one tweet considered terrorist propaganda in the indictment, Kaftancioglu quoted a senior member of the outlawed separatist Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) militant group. In another, held to be an incidence of insulting the state, she referred to the death of a 14-year-old boy who died after he was hit in the head by a tear gas cartridge during the anti-government protests that took place in Istanbul in 2013.
Thousands of imprisoned Kurds end hunger strikes after call from Ocalan some observers see as linked to Istanbul revote. A call from imprisoned Kurdish leader Abdullah Ocalan on May 26 saw thousands of
8 TURKEY Country Report June 2019 www.intellinews.com