For months, events at home and abroad appeared to be moving in Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s favour.
Years of fraught relations with Europe were warming as Ankara’s importance as a Nato ally was reinforced by US President Donald Trump’s pivot to Moscow; Turkey’s runaway inflation was cooling; and interest rates, long the bane of Erdoğan, were finally falling. There were even signs that a 40-year insurgency by Kurdish separatists may be coming to an end.
But the darker side of Erdoğan’s rule was simmering in the background as the authorities launched a months-long crackdown against his political opponents, while the veteran leader raged against an “opposition problem that poisons democracy”.
That reached an extraordinary climax on Wednesday with the arrest of Ekrem İmamoğlu, the popular mayor of Istanbul who is widely considered the most potent politician to challenge Erdoğan since the president came to power in 2002.
In one swoop, the successes Erdoğan could point to over the past 18 months were thrown into jeopardy amid fears that İmamoğlu’s arrest marked a dangerous turning point for Turkey — even in a nation that has grown used to years of creeping authoritarianism under his rule.
“He has crossed the Rubicon,” said Suat Kınıklıoğlu, a former MP. “There is no going back from here for him.”
Investors, who have cautiously returned to Turkish markets since Erdoğan abandoned the unorthodox monetary policies that had plunged the country into crisis, reacted with equal shock.
The lira hit a record low against the dollar before closing down 3.3 per cent, as concerns grew about Erdoğan’s commitment to the rule of law and economic reforms led by finance minister Mehmet Şimşek. The benchmark Bist 100 index closed down almost 9 per cent.
Capital Economics said İmamoğlu’s arrest raised concerns about “the broader reform agenda” and suggested that “political rather than economic concerns may be starting to dominate President Erdoğan’s thinking”.
Galip Dalay at Chatham House said İmamoğlu’s arrest could also dent Ankara’s hopes of using strengthened defence and security ties with Europe to develop a broader relationship with the continent.
“The mayor of Istanbul is the second-most important elected post in the country after the president,” said Dalay. “The trouble is what we see now is going to poison the relationship.”
One German official said it was impossible to “ignore Turkey” given the size of its defence industry.
“But we’re at the start of the discussion,” the official said. “It’s in Turkey’s hands to make this discussion easier or make it harder. We would like it if Turkey would make it easier. But the last 24 hours suggest it is going in a different direction.”
Yet Ankara’s newfound importance to European defence, coupled with Trump’s White House return, may have been the factors that emboldened Erdoğan, a ruthless political operator, to move against his main rival, analysts said.
Seda Demiralp, a professor of political science at Istanbul’s Işık University, said the US had made “turning this corner easier” by signalling it can “work with the people we call strongmen”.
İmamoğlu, who rocketed to political prominence after defeating Erdoğan’s candidate to become Istanbul’s mayor in 2019, stands out as one of few politicians who appeals to a broad spectrum of voters, including Kurds, conservatives and secularists.
He also helped the centrist, secular opposition Republican People’s party (CHP) inflict the worst ever election defeat on Erdoğan’s AKP in local elections last year.
But the 54-year-old has faced a spate of criminal probes in a country where Erdoğan, who has dominated Turkish politics for more than two decades, wields vast powers over state institutions, including the judiciary.
His arrest — in relation to alleged links to “terrorism”, as well as corruption charges — came just days before the CHP was set to name him as its presidential candidate ahead of elections due by 2028.
Justice minister Yılmaz Tunç insisted the judiciary had acted independently and called the opposition’s claim that the detention was a “coup” against İmamoğlu “extremely dangerous”.
But for Kınıklıoğlu, the former MP, the moves were “a clear sign that Erdoğan does not want to take any risks” before the next presidential election.
Other political rivals to Erdoğan have found themselves behind bars.
Selahattin Demirtaş, a charismatic Kurdish opposition leader who challenged Erdoğan for the presidency, has been in prison since 2016, despite a European Court of Human Rights ruling that he was wrongly incarcerated for his political speeches.
Ümit Özdağ, leader of the small ultranationalist Victory party, was jailed in January on charges that he insulted Erdoğan and “incited hatred” with anti-refugee social media posts.
But İmamoğlu represented a new frontier: never before has Erdoğan moved so decisively against the mainstream opposition and the leading light of Turkey’s oldest party, which was established by Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, the founder of the modern Turkish republic.
Erdoğan’s critics and the opposition have long believed that the creeping authoritarianism has been driven by one overriding factor: his determination to remain in power.
Erdoğan pushed through an executive presidency that gave him sweeping powers over the state in a contentious referendum in 2017, while his allies have been campaigning to change the constitution to enable him to run for a third presidential term in 2028.
Under existing rules, he could contest another election if parliament calls for elections before its term ends, or if the constitution is amended. But that would require significant opposition support to deliver a supermajority in parliament.
Hamish Kinnear, senior Middle East and north Africa analyst at risk intelligence company Verisk Maplecroft, said the risk now was that “Imamoğlu’s arrest unites the opposition and provokes a political backlash”.
Already disquiet in Turkey has moved to the streets. Thousands of protesters in Istanbul defied a ban on demonstrations imposed after the detention and crowded the streets outside City Hall, shouting: “Shoulder to shoulder against fascism.”
For his part, when police arrived at his door on Wednesday, İmamoğlu calmly knotted a blue tie in his dressing room as he delivered a defiant message on social media: “We are facing a great tyranny, but I want you to know that I will not back down.”
Additional reporting by Laura Pitel in Berlin
