Ekrem Imamoglu is one of thousands of political prisoners

The 53-year-old is considered modern and eloquent. He is also known as a politician who strives to include opponents instead of dividing them. It may well be this rather unusual political style that has helped him gain popularity beyond the borders of his own party.

His Republican People’s Party, or CHP, the country’s largest opposition party, has chosen Ekrem Imamoglu as its presidential candidate despite his arrest on corruption charges and suspicion of terrorism.

The elections are not due to take place for another three years, however a conviction at this stage could ensure that President Erdogan’s fiercest rival is excluded from the run-off.

Imamoglu’s arrest and the court’s pre-trial detention order have triggered the largest opposition protests in Turkey since the so-called Gezi protests in 2013.

Despite a heavy police presence, tens of thousands of people have taken to the streets across the country.

Osman Kavala

It was the Gezi protests that landed Turkish cultural patron and human rights activist Osman Kavala behind bars in 2017. He was in custody for almost three years accused of organizing the demonstrations, which were attended by more than 3.5 million people in 2013.

The protests were originally against a controversial construction project in Istanbul’s Gezi Park. However, following a violent police crackdown on the protesters, they quickly grew into nationwide demonstrations against Erdogan’s Justice and Development Party, or AKP, which the protesters perceived as authoritarian.

In February 2020, Kavala was shortly acquitted due to a lack of evidence. However, just a few hours later, Istanbul’s public prosecutor issued a new arrest warrant against him, this time on the grounds that Kavala had taken part in the 2016 coup attempt in Turkey.

Although this charge was later dropped, Kavala was sentenced to life imprisonment without the possibility of parole in April 2022 for attempting to overthrow the government in connection with the Gezi protests of 2013.

Can Atalay

Together with Kavala, Turkish human rights lawyer Can Atalay was also on trial. He is currently serving an 18-year prison sentence in Istanbul’s Marmara Prison for “aiding and abetting attempted subversion.” As a lawyer, Atalay has previously represented victims of various mining accidents as well as journalists and writers in court in the fight for justice and freedom of expression.

He also represented a civil rights organization that had been founded to take action against the construction plans in Gezi Park.

Despite his conviction, the Turkish Workers’ Party nominated him as a candidate for the parliamentary elections in 2023. Atalay also won a seat in parliament, but this was revoked at the beginning of 2024, leading to fierce but unsuccessful protests by the opposition in the Turkish parliament.

His six co-defendants Mucella Yapici, Cigdem Mater, Hakan Altinay, Mine Ozerden, Yigit Ali Ekmekci and Tayfun Kahraman also received the same prison sentence as Atalay.

Selahattin Demirtas

The 51-year-old Demirtas is one of Turkey’s best-known Kurdish politicians. As the former co-chairman of the pro-Kurdish HDP party, he ran against incumbent Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan in the 2014 presidential election. In the parliamentary elections that followed a year later, his party won a respectable victory and entered the House of Representatives as the third strongest party.

Shortly afterwards, the public prosecutor’s office opened an investigation against Demirtas. The prosecution claimed that he had incited armed protests against the Turkish state for standing idly by in neighboring Syria when the terrorist organization Islamic State captured the Kurdish border town of Kobane.

In November 2016, Demirtas was arrested for alleged terror propaganda and membership of an armed terrorist organization. This refers to the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), which is also considered a terrorist organization in Germany and other countries. Demirtas has always denied his membership.

As in the case of Osman Kavala, the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg ruled that Demirtas’ detention was unlawful and demanded his immediate release.

However, as with Kavala, Turkey did not follow the judge’s ruling. In May 2024, Demirtas was sentenced to 42 years in prison for his alleged role in the Kobane protests, among other allegations.

Figen Yuksekdag

A total of 108 people were charged in this trial and only a few of them were acquitted. Figen Yuksekdag is one of the best-known of those convicted. In 2014, she and Demirtas had assumed the chairmanship of the HDP, a party that has been the target of banning proceedings for four years.

In 2015, Yuksekdag sharply criticized Erdogan in connection with Turkish military operations in northern Syria. In her view, Turkey had not been fighting the Islamic State there, but had supported its actions against Kurdish forces.

Yuksekdag was not alone in making these accusations. For instance, the Turkish journalist Can Dündar also reported on Turkish arms supplies to Islamist extremists in northern Syria. The Turkish journalist was also temporarily imprisoned and now lives in exile in Berlin.

Following a lengthy investigation, Yuksekdag was arrested in late 2016 and the public prosecutor’s office pressed charges in summer 2017.

Among other accusations, she was suspected of propaganda for the northern Syrian Kurdish militia YPG, which is classified as a terrorist organization by the Turkish government. In May 2024, she was sentenced to 30 years and three months in prison.

Thousands of other political prisoners

These examples are just the most prominent of a large number of detainees in Turkey who are considered political prisoners.

None of the other 46 member states of the Council of Europe has as many people in prison as Turkey. In 2000, the country had just under 50,000 prisoners; by 2023, this figure had risen to around 350,000.

It is unclear how many of these are political prisoners, defined as people who are in prison solely or primarily because they are inconvenient to the government or organizations or individuals close to it. According to human rights organizations, there are tens of thousands of them.

There were particularly large waves of arrests around the Gezi Park protests in 2013 and after the failed coup attempt in 2016, for which Ankara blames a movement led by the late Fethullah Gülen.

As of now, more than 1,100 people are already said to have been arrested during the recent protests sparked by the arrest of Ekrem Imamoglu.