Erdogan's opponents are indicted so that they are excluded from the Presidential elections

By John Solomou
Nicosia [Cyprus], November 14 : The notoriously politicized Turkish Public Prosecutors, apparently acting on the instructions of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, have indicted several opponents of the President, seeking to prevent them from taking part in next year's elections.
The mayor of Istanbul Ekrem Imamoglu, who is seen as one of the most popular opponents of Erdogan, and the leader of the main opposition Republican Party Kemal Kilicdaroglu have already been indicted for speaking ill of Turkey, and under the draconian laws of the country, if convicted, will be banned from taking part in the elections.
Last Friday Turkish prosecutors asked the court to jail mayor Imamoglu between 15 months and four years "for insulting members of Turkey's Supreme Electoral Council" back in March 2019, when Imamoglu, a member of the Republican Party (CHP), succeeded in narrowly beating an ally of Erdogan and ended AKP's 20-year control of the municipality of Istanbul. It should be mentioned that Erdogan started his political career as mayor of Istanbul and regards the city as falling in his own sphere of influence.
At that time Erdogan refused to recognize the result of the municipal election and, although Imamoglu had already been sworn in, election officials cancelled the election on the pretext that there were thousands of allegedly "suspicious votes".
The cancellation of the election was universally condemned - even by many AKP supporters- and in the rerun, Imamoglu was elected by a much larger majority. After that, Imamoglu's popularity has increased so much that he is touted as a potential candidate for the presidency, and for this reason, he is a frequent target of Judicial harassment.
In a statement made a few months later, Imamoglu told journalists: "Those who cancelled the March 31st election are idiots because they have tarnished Turkey's international image." Soon after that remark, prosecutors charged the mayor "with insulting public officials."
Journalist Baris Tekoglu, in a column in Cumhuriyet newspaper last Monday, wrote that judge Huseyin Zengin, who was the chief judge in the mayor's trial, has told fellow judges that he had been advised by some prosecutors to sentence the mayor to over two years in prison and ban him from politics.
Tekoglu quoted Zengin saying: "I also support the government. ... But I'm a judge. I must maintain my impartiality. However, I was advised by some prosecutors to imprison Imamoglu for more than two years and to ban him from politics."
Following judge Zengin's decision to give Imamoglu a suspended sentence, the judge was transferred to Samsun last June by a presidential decree and the case against Imamoglu reopened.
Imamoglu did not appear at the hearing before the court last Friday and the case was adjourned to December 14. In an interview, the mayor said: "I am absolutely not interested in what will happen to me. I am not worried or scared. But I am ashamed by this trial. There cannot be such a ruling. It's tragicomic."
Speaking about the case, the leader of CHP Kemal leader Kilicdaroglu said: "The Turkish government is banning our mayor from all political activity, but Imamoglu is a big player who will stick in the throat of those seeking to orchestrate his downfall."
It should be noted that the AKP government also targets other politicians as well. Kemal Kilicdaroglu on Friday said he was charged under Turkey's new disinformation law passed in October for "spreading misleading information."
Critics of the law, NGOs and journalists say the wording of the law is ambiguous and could be used to target government opponents and reporters.
If convicted the leader of the opposition faces a jail sentence of up to three years and will not be allowed to take part in the 2023 elections.
Kilicdaroglu in a tweet wrote that the ruling AKP government was responsible for an "epidemic of methamphetamines" and accused Interior Minister Suleyman Soylu for "receiving dirty money" from the sale of drugs to cover the public deficit.
Reacting, Soylu accused Kilicdaroglu of slander against the Turkish state and the AK party and warned: "Kilicdaroglu, we won't let you get away with your lies. We won't let you get away with your slander."
Back in 2016, Kilicdaroglu was prosecuted for insulting President Erdogan. Kilicdaroglu had protested the arrest of 20 academics, who signed a petition to stop the crackdown in the Kurdistan, saying: "Academics who express their opinions have been detained one by one on instructions given by a so-called dictator."
As Turkey is facing a big economic crisis with inflation running at 85 per cent, Erdogan and the ruling AKP party are seeing their popularity falling dramatically and with a view to avoiding a debacle in next year elections they are using the justice system in the country to remove as many opponents as possible.
However, it should be noted that it is the Kurdish HDP, Turkey's third largest party- which for years has been the basic target of suppression by the Turkish state, allegedly for supporting the outlawed PKK.
The HDP co-chairmen Selahattin Demirtas and Figen Yuksekdag have been in jail since November 2016, while 48 municipalities controlled by the HDP have been seized by the government and more than 10,000 party members are serving various jail sentences.
Currently, a trial is ongoing before Turkey's Constitutional Court about an indictment filed by the chief prosecutor of the Court of Cassation to permanently shut down the HDP and impose a five-year ban on 451 party officials to engage in political activity.
The efforts of Erdogan's government to clip the wings of the opposition parties and sap their strength is being watched by international organisations.
For example, the Human Rights Watch Report for 2022 points out the following: "The authoritarian and highly centralized presidential government of Recep Tayyip Erdogan has set back Turkey's human rights record by decades, targeting perceived government critics and political opponents, profoundly undermining the independence of the judiciary, and hollowing out democratic institutions. "