The first session of the "profit-motivated criminal organisation" case against Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality opened on 9 March in Courtroom 1 of the Marmara prison complex at Silivri and closed on 8 July, the 64th hearing day. The number of defendants rose from 402 at the opening to 414 by July; the number in custody moved the other way, from 105 to 53.
Four rulings, 48 releases
The court reviewed detention four times during the session. It released 18 defendants on 2 April, 15 on 30 April, 9 on 21 May and 9 on 18 June; at the final review on 8 July it freed six more, among them Beyoğlu mayor İnan Güney. On three of those occasions the court released more people than the prosecutor had asked for. İmamoğlu and the detained mayors — Murat Çalık, Resul Emrah Şahan — were released at none of them.
Confessions withdrawn
Perhaps the session's defining thread was the cross-examination, one by one, of the effective-remorse statements the indictment rests on. On 14 March the confessor Ümit Polat said he had not seen the bribe he described — he had "heard" of it. By 1 April a lawyer noted that "one more confessor has withdrawn his statement"; on 1 June Vedat Şahin, saying he had given his statement under the prosecutor's direction, became the third to withdraw. Adem Soytekin — the indictment's best-known confessor, released on 30 April — had been freed after his statement in July 2025 and jailed again in October 2025 over contradictions in it.
The court's name changed; the panel did not
On 1 July the judicial council closed the Istanbul 40th Heavy Penal Court, which had been hearing the case, and transferred its chambers to a newly created 33rd Heavy Penal Court. The presiding judge, Selçuk Aylan, stayed; one member was added to the panel. That is why the file appears to have been "accepted by the 40th, ruled on by the 33rd" — it is not a sourcing error.
Outside the courtroom: party, degree, espionage
Three files beyond the trial moved while it sat. On 21 May the Ankara regional court annulled the CHP's 2023 congress for absolute nullity and removed Özgür Özel by interim measure; on 24 July 91 MPs founded YENİ Parti; on 12 August İmamoğlu resigned his CHP membership from prison. In the degree case the appeal was rejected on 18 May and the file is at the Council of State. In the espionage case, on 6 July, all four defendants were kept in detention and the hearing adjourned to 29 September.
What the second session brings
At the monthly review on 6 August the court kept 53 defendants in custody, including İmamoğlu, Çalık, Şahan, Murat Ongun, Mehmet Pehlivan and Necati Özkan; the interim decision gave no reasoning. The second session, opening 17 August, will hear only defendants who are not detained. The maximum trial duration written into the court's scheduling order is 4,600 days — about twelve and a half years.
This piece is compiled from the site's day-by-day chronology, where every date and event sits with its sources. Defendants are defendants; an indictment is an allegation.