We congratulate former NYC mayor and Turkish Airlines enthusiast Eric Adams on his newly granted Albanian citizenship.
But why did he announce it with a picture from Greece? Email us wrong answers only.
In this week’s recap:
Probes loom for CHP’s Ankara mayor
Opposition playbook and election prospects
Antalya to host security pact talks on Iran war
Domestic and diplomatic wraps
East Med broils over işkembe soup and halloumi
Also from us this week:
László Szerencsés on the Hungary elections and takeaways for Turkey
Ceren Bayar and Yıldız Yazıcıoğlu assess CHP’s by-election strategy on Stüdyo recap
There are many new readers here—Hoş geldin!—so here are four things you need to know about the judicial pressure on Turkey’s main opposition CHP:
After gains in the 2024 local elections, the CHP has faced sprawling corruption investigations for about 1.5 years.
Many elected CHP officials have been removed from office and/or jailed before standing trial.
Throughout, Erdoğan and the CHP have threatened to pull large turps out of bags (a Turkish vegetable idiom explained here).
The largest turp actually came out of Batman this week at just under 4 kilos.
Now that we’re all caught up, the next turp is taking shape with looming investigations into CHP Ankara Mayor Mansur Yavaş.
A popular figure with nationalist appeal, Yavaş is seen as a viable presidential contender after last year’s arrest of the CHP’s official candidate, Istanbul Mayor Ekrem Imamoğlu.
What happened: Interior Min. Mustafa Çiftçi authorized a second probe into Yavaş over the alleged misuse of Ankara Municipality vehicles for a 2023 election rally in Karabük. The Ankara mayor denied wrongdoing Tuesday, stating: “There is nothing to fear.”
“Granting permission for an investigation without concrete evidence is a violation of the law. This approach is nothing more than an attempt at intimidation and discrediting,” the Ankara municipality responded in a statement Tuesday.
CHP chair Özgür Özel added that Pres. Erdoğan has routinely made use of state vehicles and resources without similar inquiries.
For his part, Erdoğan criticized the CHP in a speech to AKP lawmakers Wednesday, saying:
“Turkey, which is experiencing a period of resurgence in global politics, is unfortunately experiencing a ‘period of decline’ in the municipalities run by the main opposition.”
Crackdown in context: The investigation into Turkey’s second-largest city comes amid a widening probe into its third largest, Izmir.
Former CHP Izmir mayor Tunç Soyer was re-arrested Wednesday after the party’s Ankara provincial chair Ümit Erkol was arrested after his detention last week. Both arrests are linked to bribery allegations involving IZBETON, a subsidiary of the Izmir municipality.
For the full picture, here’s a few more news items on the CHP this week:
Bolu’s acting mayor was detained Friday and later arrested for an ongoing extortion investigation that jailed Bolu’s elected mayor in February.
31 people were detained Friday for a corruption probe into the CHP-led Yenişehir district municipality in Mersin.
Bornova Mayor Ömer Eşki was released Friday though his municipality remains under investigation for alleged fraud.
Former CHP chair Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu was sentenced to nearly a year in prison for insulting the president. His lawyer vowed to appeal the verdict.
And the European Court of Human Rights notified Turkey of a case brought by Ekrem Imamoğlu regarding his pre-trial detention and investigations.
Analysis: Commenting on the investigations into Yavaş and other CHP officials, Seren Selvin Korkmaz, co-founder and co-director of the IstanPol Institute, said the key issue is “not so much their legal substance, but their political impact.”
“These cases function in two main ways. First, they damage the reputations of political figures, regardless of the eventual legal outcome,” Korkmaz told Turkey recap this morning.
“Second, even in the absence of a conviction, they can paralyze these actors—either by keeping them entangled in lengthy legal processes or, in some cases, through temporary detention. In this sense, the process itself becomes the punishment.”
She continued, stating the trajectory of the Yavaş investigation will be determined primarily through the government’s own “risk calculations.”
“More broadly, these judicial processes … constrain political actors by discouraging bold action, and they contribute to shaping public perception—reinforcing a narrative that no one within the CHP is ‘clean’,” Korkmaz added.
“In that sense, they operate as instruments of political control as much as legal proceedings.”
Process of alleviation: Opposition playbook and election prospects
