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Shkruar nga Diplomatico | Pamfleti.net
Erdogan launches "political purge", another opposition mayor arrested in Turkey!
What is happening in Turkey today is not an anti-corruption campaign, but a surgical operation to politically eliminate the opposition through politically motivated arrests and trials.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan's regime has struck another blow against the country's opposition, arresting the mayor of the Bayrampaşa district of Istanbul, Hasan Mutlu, along with 47 other local officials, on Saturday as part of a corruption investigation.
According to reports by state broadcaster TRT Haber, Mutlu and his associates are accused of bribery, abuse of office, fraud and tender manipulation. Police have raided 72 locations across the district, seizing documents and suspected materials as evidence.
With the detention of Hasan Mutlu, mayor of the Bayrampaşa district of Istanbul, and the arrest of over 47 other local officials, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan is unveiling the purest version of an autocracy that is reaching out to every corner of local government.
The arrests are based on charges common to regimes of this type: abuse of power, bribery, fraud, tender manipulation. But the message is political and brutal: “every official of the Republican People’s Party (CHP) is attackable and replaceable.” These are not investigations, they are warnings.
At the center of this campaign is Ekrem İmamoğlu, the mayor of Istanbul and current leader of the Turkish opposition. Arrested in March on charges of forging a diploma, a grotesque allegation for a politician with an international profile, he poses the biggest real threat to Erdoğan, not only in the 2028 elections, but also in any early election scenario.
Erdoğan knows that his power is no longer guaranteed through free voting, but through the systematic annihilation of any real alternative. And for this, he is using the state. The courts, the police, the prosecution, the public media, have been turned into political weapons. Turning every opponent into a suspect and every supporter into an object of fear.
This is why Mutlu's arrest is not an isolated case. He is just the latest link in a chain that includes dozens of CHP mayors arrested in recent months, a civil trial in Ankara seeking to annul the opposition congress (and destabilize its leadership), and a general climate of legal uncertainty for all those who dare to challenge the regime.
What is Erdoğan afraid of? Losing the big cities. In the last local elections, the CHP not only retained Istanbul and Ankara, but also managed to break into AKP strongholds. This is unacceptable for a leader who links his legitimacy to absolute power. So he has chosen the classic path of autocrats: better without opposition than with a real risk in the elections.
In this context, the punishment of İmamoğlu and other opposition figures is not a legal matter – it is a well-calculated project of cleaning up the political scene to guarantee the survival of a leader who no longer has the patience or confidence to win through the race.
Turkey today is not moving towards free elections, but towards a "controlled vote autocracy", where participation is allowed only if it does not challenge the government. If the trials of the opposition are accelerated and the bans continue, then the 2028 elections may be just a formality for a president who has eliminated all opponents ahead of time. /Pamphlet
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