İBB corruption case
402 defendants at the opening, 414 by July 2026. Istanbul heavy penal court, sitting inside the Marmara prison complex at Silivri.
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OPEN RECORD
An independent record of the criminal and administrative proceedings around Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality — every dated step, every source named, in English and Turkish.
These proceedings are separate in law and entangled in fact: a release in one file has repeatedly left a defendant in prison on another.
402 defendants at the opening, 414 by July 2026. Istanbul heavy penal court, sitting inside the Marmara prison complex at Silivri.
106Four defendants, 162-page indictment, 15–20 years sought. Istanbul 25th Heavy Penal Court.
7Terrorism charges over a 2024 local-election arrangement; the first case in this record to reach a verdict.
4Administrative, not criminal — but decisive: a degree is a constitutional condition for a presidential candidacy.
6Trusteeship over the CHP's Istanbul branch, the absolute-nullity ruling on its congress, and the founding of YENİ Parti.
7Parallel investigations in Adana, Antalya, Adıyaman, Aydın, Bolu, İzmir and Mersin.
14Misuse-of-office charge over a personal car used as mayor of Beylikdüzü, 2019–2024. Büyükçekmece 21st Criminal Court of First Instance, heard at Silivri.
1Council of Europe and human-rights organisations.
12Newest first. Filter by proceeding.
A separate criminal case — over the İBB mayor's use, as mayor of Beylikdüzü from 2019 to 2024, of a car belonging to a company he was linked to as an official vehicle, said to have cost the public purse about 122,000 lira — had its first hearing, at Büyükçekmece 21st Criminal Court of First Instance but moved to a courtroom at Silivri for lack of space; a two-year sentence is sought on a misuse-of-office charge. Twelve defendants are named, including several İBB and Beylikdüzü staff. In his defence İmamoğlu said he had covered the vehicle's running costs himself and rejected the charge; the court heard eight of twelve defendants and adjourned to 23 October, when İmamoğlu and Fatih Keleş are to be present along with the four not yet heard.
The İBB case, now 435 defendants after the supplementary indictment's merger, continued with statements from defendants not in custody — by the close, 247 of 325 on the list had been heard. Rail-systems engineer Sezen Algedik and Yapı Merkezi board member Sami Özge Arıoğlu rejected the charges against them and asked for acquittal. In the afternoon İmamoğlu left to attend the first hearing of a separate, unrelated case over his use of a personal car as mayor of Beylikdüzü (see the official-vehicle case, below). It remained unclear when the 22 defendants added by the merged supplementary indictment, six of them in custody, would be heard.
The first hearing day after the merger of the supplementary indictment opened with the presiding judge saying the 21 newly added defendants could not yet be heard, as notifications had not reached them. Fourteen more defendants not in custody gave statements as the defence marathon — planned to finish by the end of September — continued; the sitting closed at 19:05, with İmamoğlu due in two trials at Silivri the next day.
The İstanbul chief prosecutor's office completed a 195-page supplementary indictment over the İBB subsidiary Ağaç ve Peyzaj A.Ş., seeking sentences for 29 suspects across 12 new actions, numbered 144 to 155 after the main indictment's 143. İstanbul 33rd Heavy Penal Court accepted it and merged the file with the main case, finding a factual and legal connection; eight of the 29 were already on trial, so 21 new defendants joined and the case grew from 414 to 435 defendants.
Closing the week, Murat Ongun addressed the contradictions between the confessors' statements at the prosecutor's office and in court: "they come here very comfortably, say 'I know', then say 'I heard', and leave swinging their arms." No ruling was announced on the 21 defendants held over a year on charges outside the heavy penal court's own jurisdiction. The day ended at 18:10, with the trial resuming Monday.
The sitting ran to 23:07; twelve more defendants were heard and the number of completed defences reached 200. Beylikdüzü mayor Murat Çalık, cross-examining a defendant who had accused him — a man arrested in a separate file on an allegation of selling forged citizenship papers — asked how a bribery meeting could have taken place while Çalık was already in custody.
The defence marathon of the defendants not in custody passed its halfway mark: by the close, 188 of the 325 on the list had been heard. İmamoğlu objected to a question the prosecutor put to Doğuş Group executive Hüsnü Akhan about aid payments for the Hatay earthquake. The sitting ran from 11:13 to 22:00.
İstanbul Bar Association president İbrahim Kaboğlu attended with bar officials and addressed the court on the measures needed for a fair trial and an effective defence, following the bar's application over midnight sittings. Advertiser Mete Mağden said the one wrong he owned in the process was submitting a side bid in a tender. The sitting closed at 20:49.
İmamoğlu cross-examined former İBB secretary-general Can Akın Çağlar over action 60 — the claim that some 1.6 billion dollars of foreign financing was diverted; Çağlar criticised the banking-regulator reports behind it as resting on incomplete and inconsistent data. Amid tension in the courtroom, YENİ Parti MP Suat Özçağdaş was removed. The sitting closed at 21:33.
The İstanbul Bar Association applied to the court, calling hearings that run past midnight a violation of the right to a fair trial; bar officials observed the day's sitting. Seventeen defendants not in custody gave statements, and the presiding judge said he would finish "at humane hours" — the day closed at 22:00.
Statements of defendants benefiting from effective remorse were heard. Medya A.Ş. general manager Fatoş Pınar Türker, in custody, collapsed during the sitting; her lawyer warned the court that no one could answer for it if something happened to these people. Another lawyer told the bench that unless it wanted to appear in the crime pages, the hearing hours should be moved to something reasonable. The day again ran to just before 01:00.
Defences of the defendants not in custody resumed after the review. İmamoğlu's lawyer Tora Pekin objected to sittings stretching into the night, arguing sessions should not run past 18:00 absent a genuine necessity and citing a consultation with the Turkish Medical Association. The court kept its schedule; the day ran from mid-morning to 01:45.
The sixth detention review closed the week of release statements. İmamoğlu, speaking last, told the court that if a single piece of evidence were put on the screen he would apologise before 87 million. The prosecutor then asked for all 53 detained defendants to remain in custody — the first review with no release sought at all, which stunned the courtroom. After a recess the court released two: Bakırköy deputy mayor Ali Rıza Akyüz and businessman Serkan Öztürk; 51, İmamoğlu among them, stayed in custody. It was the smallest number of releases of the six reviews — earlier ones had freed 18, 15, 9, 9 and 6 — bringing total releases to 59.
Release statements ran through the list. Murat Ongun said the only thing against him was statements — no financial trace of enrichment; Murat Kapki asked how he could be a member of an İmamoğlu organisation when he had hung the rival candidate's posters. The day closed with Medya A.Ş. general manager Fatoş Pınar Türker asking, as a single mother, to be returned to her daughters; İmamoğlu's own request was left to the next day, with the ruling to follow.
Release statements continued. Campaign director Necati Özkan, in custody for 532 days, said the file showed no tender, no bid and no authority on his part and asked to be released; lawyer Mehmet Pehlivan's counsel argued his one-year detention limit on the charged offences had run out without an extension ruling.
The week of release statements before the sixth detention review opened. Şişli mayor Resul Emrah Şahan, in custody for 17 months, rejected the accusations against him and asked to return to his post; Beylikdüzü mayor Mehmet Murat Çalık's request was put by his lawyer. By the end of the day 12 of the 53 detained defendants had spoken.
With few defendants not in custody present, the court brought forward the release requests planned for the following week: the first came from Mustafa Akın, İmamoğlu's protection officer. Other detained defendants said they were not ready, since the requests had been announced for Monday, and the day closed early; the week of 31 August was set aside for all 53 detained defendants' release statements.
Defences of the defendants not in custody continued past midnight, closing at 00:41. Journalists Şaban Sevinç and Yavuz Oğhan answered the charge of aiding an organisation — Sevinç said nothing like this had happened to him in a career spent at Türkiye's main outlets. The court said İmamoğlu's own release request would be heard on 3 September, in the detention review.
The fifth hearing day of the second session opened with Muzaffer Beyaz's additional statement. Hasan İmamoğlu, the defendant's father, gave his defence — "I am on trial here for being the İBB mayor's father" — and while his questioning was still running the trial prosecutor asked for a criminal complaint against him over money whose source he said was unexplained. In the afternoon Ertan Yıldız — named in the indictment as one of six alleged organisation managers, who gave seven effective-remorse statements — took the stand for the first time, saying he and İmamoğlu knew each other well but were not close friends; under cross-examination he acknowledged he had remained chairman of an İBB-linked company until his arrest, answered many questions with "I don't remember", and said his claims about Ali Sukas rested on "feeling" rather than direct knowledge. Late at night, as the presiding judge cut off defence lawyers' questions — at one point having a lawyer's microphone switched off — İmamoğlu left the courtroom in protest, and most of the defence lawyers followed. The sitting closed at 00:36 after the builder İsa Ünal's statement.
İstanbul 1st Heavy Penal Court gave its verdict in the 200-defendant case built around businessman Aziz İhsan Aktaş, the İBB case's key confessor. The court found no criminal organisation existed: Aktaş was acquitted of founding one and all defendants of membership. Aktaş, who did not attend, was sentenced to 2 years 8 months 15 days for bid-rigging, with a two-year tender ban; his companies under seizure were ordered returned. Beşiktaş mayor Rıza Akpolat received the heaviest sentence — bribery, laundering and bid-rigging counts reported as totalling more than 20 years — and remains in custody. Seyhan mayor Oya Tekin was sentenced to 8 years 4 months for bribery and stays in custody; Avcılar mayor Utku Caner Çaykara, sentenced to 6 years 8 months for bribery, was released. Adana mayor Zeydan Karalar received 6 years 3 months for bribery; Esenyurt's Ahmet Özer was acquitted of forgery, with an 8-month suspended finding for negligent misuse of office. The rulings were reported as unanimous.
On the fourth day of the second session İstanbul 1st Heavy Penal Court rejected the prosecutor's appeal against the refusals to arrest Muzaffer Beyaz, settling that he remains on trial without detention. The day's defences opened with Yusuf Kaya; Erdoğan Göğen and Çiftay chairman Gülant Candaş, charged over the alleged bribe tied to the İSTAÇ waste-facility transfer contract, rejected the accusations, and İBB deputy secretary-general Erdal Celal Aksoy also gave his statement. Confessor Adem Kameroğlu, joining by video link, was cross-examined by İmamoğlu — asked repeatedly "did I threaten you?", Kameroğlu said there had been no direct threat from him. The journalists Ruşen Çakır — "last month I interviewed Duran Kalkan in Kandil; no one even took my statement, yet here I face an organisation charge" — and Soner Yalçın objected to the charge of aiding an organisation. After midnight Aziz İhsan Aktaş, on trial separately as an alleged crime-ring leader, gave his statement and called İmamoğlu the "political and administrative leader" of what he described as a system collecting money — a claim İmamoğlu's lawyer Tora Pekin answered in cross-examination after putting on the record that a sitting stretching past 1 a.m. violated fair trial. The sitting, opened at 11:10, closed at 01:22 — the longest yet, with 19 defendants heard, bringing four-day total to 53. With the Aktaş case's verdict hearing occupying the courtroom on Monday, the trial resumes Tuesday, 25 August.
On the third day of the second session the presiding judge said the court planned to finish the statements and cross-examinations of the defendants not in custody by the end of September, hearing at least 20 a day. KOBİL chairman İsmet Koyun, charged over the "İstanbul Senin" data-leak allegation, said he did not know why he was there and that three reports had found no leak; Naim Erol Özgüner, the former İBB IT head who had turned state's evidence, gave his statement and was cross-examined by defendants who said his account had put them in custody. The prosecutor asked a second time for Muzaffer Beyaz's arrest, again citing contradictory statements; the court again refused. After a clash with İmamoğlu over the way he was putting questions, the judge invoked Article 201 of the Code of Criminal Procedure: questions to a defendant would from now on be put through the bench. The sitting, opened at 10:45, ran past midnight and closed at 00:35 after roughly 14 hours, with 14 defendants not in custody heard; when lawyers objected that such hours undermined a sound trial, the judge answered that he was not happy either but stood by his decision.
The day began with reporters without a state-issued "turquoise" press card being kept out of the public hearing. Two defendants not in custody, the brothers Seyfi and Muzaffer Beyaz, gave statements and were cross-examined; Beylikdüzü mayor Murat Çalık, in custody, read out what he said were contradictions between Seyfi Beyaz's six statements. İmamoğlu, taking the floor for the first time in the second session, rejected the record that he had waived his right to silence: "I did not use my right to silence." While Muzaffer Beyaz's questioning was still under way the trial prosecutor asked for his arrest on the ground that his statements were contradictory; defence lawyers objected that the request tainted an ongoing examination. After the lunch break the court rejected the request by majority, with one member judge dissenting. Former Beylikdüzü deputy mayor Veysel Erçevik, who had turned state's evidence, said he had applied of his own free will; asked whether the effective-remorse provisions had been explained to him, he said: "No, I didn't read it, I signed." The sitting ran from 10:45 to nearly midnight — some 13 hours — and heard 15 defendants not in custody.
The second session opened at a newly built courtroom opposite the Marmara prison in Silivri, with 414 defendants, 53 of them in custody. The court sat about two hours late after security checks were repeated. The morning went to procedural requests: İmamoğlu's lawyer Hasan Fehmi Demir argued that a defendant who did not speak at the first session had not waived his right to defence, asked that the session begin with İmamoğlu's statement, and asked for the trial to be moved to the İstanbul Courthouse. The court kept the pre-set order of the defendants not in custody, refused the move, and said İmamoğlu's defence would be taken "at a suitable point, within a reasonable time", without naming a date. Five defendants not in custody then gave statements — Mehmet Şahin, Ayşe Hitchins, Baki Aydöner, Mehmet Çakılcıoğlu and the singer Ercan Saatçi. A detention review was scheduled for the week of 31 August. YENİ Parti chair Özgür Özel watched from the gallery.
Nineteen days after YENİ Parti was founded, İmamoğlu resigned his 17-year membership of the CHP from prison and called on supporters to join the new party under Özgür Özel.
In the last detention review before the second session, the court ruled that 53 defendants — including İmamoğlu, Murat Çalık, Resul Emrah Şahan, Murat Ongun, Mehmet Pehlivan and Necati Özkan — would remain in custody. The interim decision gave no reasoning for the conclusion.
Ninety-one members of parliament who had left the CHP founded YENİ Parti under Özgür Özel, choosing the anniversary of the Treaty of Lausanne as the founding date. With 91 seats the new party became the second largest group in parliament and formally took the status of main opposition.
On the 64th and last day of the first session İmamoğlu, brought back after being kept away from the two previous hearing days, took the floor in the afternoon to object to being given about a day and a half for his defence and declined to give a statement on those terms. The court recorded that he had exercised his right to silence, ordered him out of the courtroom under Article 203 of the Code of Criminal Procedure and adjourned. In the evening the court released six defendants — Beyoğlu mayor İnan Güney, Ceyda Kıryak, Serap Karay, Mehmet Karataş, Seyfullah Demirel and Metin Bal — and closed the first session. The next detention review was set for 6 August and the second session for 17 August 2026, to hear the defendants not in custody.
Fatih Keleş's lawyer Nergiz İnce questioned confessor Servet Yıldırım's detailed account of tender meetings he had not attended: "How do you know, in such detail, what was said in a room you never entered? There's no defence for this. I think Servet Yıldırım needs to be placed under legal guardianship." İmamoğlu, not brought to court that day, was to be heard the following afternoon after Keleş's lawyers finished.
At İstanbul 59th Criminal Court of First Instance, the criminal case over İmamoğlu's cancelled university diploma — a forgery charge carrying up to 8 years 9 months — was heard on a day when he faced three separate proceedings. The court decided to wait for the administrative-court ruling on the diploma's cancellation to become final and adjourned the case to 25 December 2026.
The Istanbul 25th Heavy Penal Court — now under a new panel — ruled that İmamoğlu, Necati Özkan, Merdan Yanardağ and Hüseyin Gün would remain in detention, ordered witnesses' current addresses to be traced, and refused a request to lift the court-appointed trustee at the broadcaster Tele1. It adjourned to 29 September. As the ruling was read, the gallery jeered; Yanardağ shouted "This is a court of tyranny — down with tyranny, long live freedom," Özkan added "long live democracy, long live justice," and İmamoğlu said only: "All of this is noise. It will pass."
İmamoğlu delivered his defence in the espionage trial, rejecting the charge and addressing the political leadership directly.
İstanbul 33rd Heavy Penal Court president Selçuk Aylan cut into Fatih Keleş's defence and closed the day, telling him and his lawyers to have it wrapped up by the next evening: "Wednesday morning we'll move on to Ekrem Bey."
By now the İBB case had 414 defendants, 59 of them in custody. On the 61st day of hearings a dispute broke out between İmamoğlu and the presiding judge over the order of defence statements and the court's aim of closing the first session by 9 July; İmamoğlu said finishing by then was "impossible", the judge said the plan would not change and that defendants not yet heard would go to the second session. The judge then ordered İmamoğlu, two of his lawyers (Tora Pekin and Mehmet Can Seyhan) and CHP MP Suat Özçağdaş removed, had the public gallery cleared and suspended the hearing.
Beyoğlu mayor İnan Güney completed his defence; he said his father, a retired cleaner he thanked by name, had begun cancer treatment during the trial and had come to a prison visit in a wheelchair. The next defendant, İmamoğlu İnşaat general manager Tuncay Yılmaz, was taken to hospital with high blood pressure and could not give his statement that day; his defence was put back to Monday.
Ongun continued his defence into a second day, saying of the indictment's authors: "Even Emrah Bağdatlı couldn't have exaggerated as much as they did" — a reference to a satirical commentator, aimed at the scale of the accusations against him.
The Council of Judges and Prosecutors closed the Istanbul 40th Heavy Penal Court, which had heard the case since it opened, and transferred its first and second panels to the newly created Istanbul 33rd Heavy Penal Court. The panel that had been hearing the İBB case — presided by Selçuk Aylan — continued under the new court number with one additional member, growing from three judges to four. The case itself was not reassigned to a different panel; only the court's name and composition changed.
İBB Media A.Ş. chairman Murat Ongun, jailed since March 2025, gave his first defence: "This case is political from A to Z," he said, and alleged a lawyer had asked him for a million dollars. He also said: "Law in our country is undefinable — like a UFO."
Gürkan Akgün's lawyers closed their defenses by noting his name appears nowhere in the file's MASAK report and arguing that call-record and cell-tower data cannot count as evidence on their own. As the session closed, the presiding judge asked İmamoğlu, “Ekrem Bey, are you ready?” “Always,” İmamoğlu replied. His lawyers said they would present their defense later; the next defense turn passed to Murat Ongun.
After Gürkan Akgün's defense, questions came not only from Ekrem İmamoğlu but also from jailed defendants Aykut Erdoğdu, Nihat Sütlaş and Fatoş Pınar Türker, and from Nusret Yılmaz, lawyer for İmamoğlu's father Hasan İmamoğlu; the presiding judge cut Erdoğdu's question short and had his microphone switched off. Addressing the writers and publishers who had come to watch, İmamoğlu said as he left: “How lovely — I felt as if I'd come to a library.”
The lawyer for Kağan Sürmegöz, head of İBB's real-estate management department, said the committee decisions his client is accused over also carry the signatures of AKP members who face no prosecution: “If you're from A, no action is taken; if you're from B, you've been jailed for a year and a half.” In his own defense, Sürmegöz rejected the charges, saying he neither signed nor bore responsibility for the transactions deemed suspect.
The presiding judge lifted the asset freeze that had been placed on the pension payments of detained and undetained defendants alike — a list that included İmamoğlu's father, Hasan İmamoğlu. The court also granted Medya A.Ş. general manager Fatoş Pınar Türker's request to lift the freeze on her property.
Doğan Hamit Doğruer, deputy general manager of the municipal company Kültür A.Ş., began his defense, rejecting the charges — “accusations that wouldn't occur to me if I thought for 40 years” — and said he had no authority to pick firms in tenders, his job being to check that processes followed the regulations. Feeling unwell toward the end, he asked to continue at the next session; he completed his defense the next day, arguing that the Court of Accounts' yearly audits since 2019 had raised no criticism of the exception-procedure tenders.
The court released nine further defendants: Ahmet Güldü, Yunus Göçer, Hasan Yalaz, Erdinç Çolak, Alper Aydın, İpek Elif Atayman, Yavuz Saltık, Mustafa Karaoğlu and Halit Burak Atalan. Saltık, head of İBB's muhtar-relations department, had been held since the first wave of detentions in March 2025.
A further group was released, among them the İBB department head Yavuz Saltık, İpek Elif Atayman and Mustafa Karaoğlu. Atayman had been held fifteen months, latterly in Afyonkarahisar, an eight-hour journey for her family. Those released were applauded at the prison gate.
By 381 votes, the European Parliament adopted a resolution urging the EU's high representative to consider sanctions — including asset freezes in the EU — against Justice Minister Akın Gürlek under the EU's global human-rights sanctions regime. The resolution links the nearly 4,000-page İBB indictment to Gürlek's tenure as Istanbul's chief public prosecutor, calls him "a key actor in the state's repressive machinery," and criticises his promotion to minister.
"Shall we stop here, Ramazan?" the presiding judge asked İBB zoning department head Ramazan Gülten partway through his defence. "I'll wrap it up right now," Gülten replied, and the session closed with other defendants visibly unhappy at the interruption.
Continuing Buğra Gökçe's defence, his lawyer Engin Çakmak closed on a personal note about a wedding photograph entered into the file: "My client is sensitive about it, but I'm not asking for the photograph — I'm asking for his release. I want to see Buğra among us at the 18 June review, able to give his wife the wedding she deserves. Keep the photograph — we want Buğra."
Taner Çetin's lawyer told the court every signature his client had put to paper complied with the law, backed by the Court of Accounts' own audits. The next day would bring the first statement in fifteen months from İstanbul Planning Agency head Buğra Gökçe. Leaving the room, İmamoğlu said only: "This thing has collapsed... let's look ahead, ahead."
The week's final hearing day was given to Fatoş Ayık's defense and cross-examination; the prosecutor's questions were left for Monday. Her father, a retired police officer, called out from the gallery: “I am proud of you, my daughter — I am crying. What a blessing to have raised such a child.” İmamoğlu turned to the family: “I kiss your hands. We too are proud of your daughters. The treasure of all of Turkey is entrusted to people like them.”
Halit Burak Atalan made his defense and asked to be released to rejoin his children; his lawyers argued his 15 months in detention were unlawful. At day's end, İmamoğlu addressed the gallery as he left the courtroom: “Love will win, malice will lose... Together we will defeat this darkness.”
Burak Candan, defending Medya A.Ş. general manager Fatoş Pınar Türker, said his client was jailed on bribery suspicion yet faces no bribery charge in the indictment, and that the file contains no damage assessment, witness statement or tax report to support the claims; he asked for her release. In her own defense, Türker also said she was arrested over bribery even though the indictment does not charge her with it.
Gizem Karaköçek, lawyer for Kahraman Yeşilyurt, described a fainting spell her client suffered on a prison staircase: the ward — built for 21 but holding over 70 — was so crowded that the collapse was noticed at once, and wardmates saved him from hitting his head and tumbling down the stairs. “I thank you for the ward change never being granted,” she said, “because we owe my client's life to it.”
Mustafa Karaoğlu, deputy head of İBB's press and public-relations department and in custody for 13 months, said the tenders he was charged over were promotion and event contracts and that "six actions, six tenders were multiplied as if there were more" using the same template. His lawyer Erçağ Erdoğmuş said his client had not been arrested over any public loss and asked for release in view of time served. İmamoğlu urged the bench to change its once-a-month detention-review rule: "You can bring it down to a week."
Defending Hüseyin Köksal, a lawyer told the court that confessor Servet Yıldırım — a figure who would resurface in the file over a month later — had introduced himself as Hüseyin Köksal when giving his effective-remorse statement, and that a selfie tied to the statement had never been put to the defence. "Servet is neither a witness nor a defendant, yet his statement is pasted across the whole indictment," the lawyer said, asking the court to formally establish Yıldırım's status.
The day's statements were brief; the turns of three jailed defendants were skipped — one's lawyer had a funeral, one was on a family visit, and one was unprepared with no lawyer in the room — and the presiding judge ended the hearing early. Defenses resumed the next day.
Vedat Şahin told the court that he had given his effective-remorse statement under direction, naming a lawyer who had visited him in prison. He was the third defendant to withdraw such a statement, after Şeymus Sarıboğa and Murat Kaplı. It was also the first hearing at which İmamoğlu was seen in person since the absolute-nullity ruling that removed the CHP leadership ten days earlier.
The journalist Alican Uludağ was released from Silivri prison. Journalists are among the defendants in the İBB file, and the courtroom seating of the press had already halted a hearing in March.
In the monthly detention review the prosecutor requested the release of five defendants; the court released nine, among them Iraz Bayrak, Sezai Büyükçubağ and Cevat Kaya. The releases came the day after the absolute-nullity ruling that removed the CHP leadership — a coincidence of timing the defence noted but the court did not address.
The 36th Civil Chamber of the Ankara Regional Court of Appeals annulled the CHP's 38th ordinary congress of 4–5 November 2023 for absolute nullity, finding that delegate votes had been corrupted by money, jobs and candidacy promises. Chairman Özgür Özel and the party's governing bodies were removed by interim measure and Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu and the pre-2023 bodies were reinstated. The decision reached the Court of Cassation on 17 July 2026.
The day's defenses came from Kültür A.Ş. general manager Serdal Taşkın and from Serhat Kapki, brother of Murat Kapki; Taşkın said there was no concrete evidence against him, while Kapki argued the charges were constructed to pressure his brother. A message shared from İmamoğlu's account the same day read “Never give up, never give up,” and addressed CHP MPs: “Our MPs — much duty falls to you. Thank goodness you exist.”
The 7th Administrative Chamber of the Istanbul Regional Administrative Court unanimously rejected the appeal against the annulment. İmamoğlu took the case to the Council of State (Danıştay) in June 2026, where it remains pending.
Murat Kapki's lawyer Fikret Araz told the court that his client's effective-remorse statements had been given under pressure — his brother and employees jailed, his wife detained — with release as the real motive, and should be treated as void. The presiding judge said the court's earlier written decision on the detention review stood, and closed the day; Kapki's last lawyer was to speak on Wednesday, 20 May, when the 40th day would open.
The court followed the prosecution and ordered the continued detention of İmamoğlu, Necati Özkan, Merdan Yanardağ and Hüseyin Gün. Gün, the technology investor the indictment casts as the foreign link, had told the court at the opening and again that week: "I am not a spy and I have not accused anyone of being one."
In the courtroom next door, Istanbul's 1st Heavy Penal Court ruled on 11 jailed defendants at the parallel Aktaş tender-case hearing where the prosecutor presented the final opinion: Beşiktaş deputy mayor Ali Rıza Yılmaz and three people close to Beşiktaş mayor Rıza Akpolat — two in-laws and a friend — were released; Akpolat himself, Seyhan mayor Oya Tekin, Avcılar mayor Utku Caner Çaykara and four others remained in custody. Leaving the courtroom, Tekin said: “We want the law to be equal for everyone; one day everyone will need the law.”
The prosecutor delivered his opinion and asked that İmamoğlu, Necati Özkan, Merdan Yanardağ and Hüseyin Gün all remain in detention, on two grounds: that the evidence was not yet fully collected, and that the evidence already gathered justified continued detention.
Gökhan Köseoğlu, cost-verification chief at Kültür A.Ş., said in his defense that he had no role, authority or signature in any of the 14 acts in the indictment. Questioned by Fatih Keleş's lawyer Baran Kaya, he said he had never given a statement to prosecutors before 19 March and had not gone to chat with them either: “They say they bought me meals — I didn't even have tea with them.”
Closing the tenth week of the first session, the presiding judge told the defence that if statements moved faster more defendants could be heard before the detention review, and that the session the court had hoped to close by the end of April now looked likely to run to the end of June. Leaving the courtroom, İmamoğlu said he would be at the espionage trial, not the İBB hearing, the next morning.
The first hearing in the espionage case was held at Silivri, putting İmamoğlu before two separate courts in overlapping periods. He addressed the president and the leader of the MHP directly from the dock.
İBB deputy secretary general Arif Gürkan Alpay said in his defense that his name appears in no reports and the dates do not line up: “I stand before you over act number 139, in which I am accused with no evidence beyond one person's abstract statements.” His lawyer Kemal Kumkumoğlu played official footage in the courtroom showing Istanbul's governor inspecting the Cebeci quarry in 2023. At the same hours, İmamoğlu was before judges in the separate espionage case, heard for the first time in the courtroom next door in Silivri — which is why he was absent from the İBB hearing.
Closing week nine, İmamoğlu told the court: "I said I'd be stronger this week; next week we'll be stronger still. Don't worry — this thing they call an indictment, a slander-sheet, a promotion-sheet, is garbage."
Metin Çetinbaş, defending Yağmur Cansu Yeşilyurt, challenged the cell-tower evidence in the file: at least a million people pass through Şişli every day, he said, so data placing someone there proves nothing — and the same held for the quarry in Sultangazi, a district of 530,000.
Defending Turgay Tokdemir, lawyer Halil Bostancı cited an expert report commissioned by the İstanbul 3rd Commercial Court of First Instance finding that the company held vehicles and assets worth 149,674,000 lira as of 6 June 2025 — real equipment, he argued, not the profile of a firm existing only to issue fake invoices; the company was by then under court-appointed trusteeship.
The 31st day opened and was then abandoned: after a heated exchange the presiding judge left the bench with the words "there will be no hearing today, we continue tomorrow", and the panel did not return. The row had begun when defence lawyers asked for the record to note that Ferhat Murat, a journalist close to the government, had been seen using the corridor and entrance reserved for judges and prosecutors — closed even to members of parliament.
The Istanbul 25th Heavy Penal Court accepted a 162-page indictment charging İmamoğlu, campaign strategist Necati Özkan, journalist Merdan Yanardağ and technology investor Hüseyin Gün with political espionage between 2019 and 2025. Prosecutors seek 15 to 20 years each. The indictment alleges the aim was to manipulate the 2019 local elections; the first hearing was set for 11 May in Silivri.
The prosecution asked for nine releases; the court released fifteen, among them Adem Soytekin, the businessman whose effective-remorse statement runs through the indictment. Soytekin had been freed in July 2025 after that statement, then jailed again in October 2025 over contradictions in it. Seventy-seven defendants remained in custody; the court set the next review for three weeks later.
Defendants continued giving statements and facing cross-examination — the lawyers of confessing defendant Adem Soytekin were heard, and Adem Başer, on trial over the Cebeci quarry acts, said “I am a finance worker” and denied any responsibility for the alleged illegal dumping at the quarry. The court announced the hearing would continue the next day with the remaining defenses and the detention review at which release orders were expected.
Under cross-examination, Fatih Keleş's lawyer Baran Kaya was reported to have put it to Adem Soytekin that two lawyers involved in his first effective-remorse statement had told another client to "turn confessor — assassination claims are coming", around the time a newspaper had reported an alleged plot against Aziz İhsan Aktaş. Leaving the room, İmamoğlu said only: "It has collapsed, it has collapsed..."
Hasan Fehmi Demir, defending Mehmet Pehlivan, told the court: “With this case, the will of Istanbul's voters has been taken hostage. Mehmet Pehlivan and the other defendants have been jailed as members of an organization that does not exist.” He said the file's confessing defendants had been repeatedly arrested and released, “tormented until they gave statements that suited the system's purpose,” and were freed only after giving the desired statements.
Mehmet Pehlivan, İmamoğlu's lawyer, jailed five weeks earlier, gave his defence. In the same building on the same day the Aktaş case — the 200-defendant tender file — was also sitting.
Elçin Karaoğlu's lawyer Nevzat Kaan Karcılıoğlu continued the defense, noting that Karaoğlu took office only in September 2020 and that most of the acts attributed to them predate it. The defense argued that the contradictory, bribe-denying statements of Ayşegül Kayabay — the witness the bribery allegation rests on — were left out of the indictment. In the parallel Aziz İhsan Aktaş tender case heard in the same Silivri complex (roughly 200 defendants), five release orders would come the next day.
Elçin Karaoğlu of İBB's Boğaziçi zoning directorate said in their defense that one of the alleged acts carries an offense date of 2019, when Karaoğlu held no position at that directorate — arguing they were not in office on the date of the alleged bribery. “Is the public service I gave 26 years to, and the municipal organizations I served in, a criminal organization?” Karaoğlu asked.
In the sixth week the court was getting through four or five defendants a week, against six to eight earlier, as defence statements and lawyers' submissions lengthened. The day began 45 minutes late; İmamoğlu spoke about the school attack in Kahramanmaraş in which ten people had been killed.
When his 90-year-old uncle, who had come to watch the hearing, told him “this is not the place you deserve,” İmamoğlu replied: “I kiss his hands. I am where I need to be: in the people's heart. In this country everyone will find the place they deserve.” Turning to the gallery, İmamoğlu also addressed the government: “Come and watch; just as they could not go to an election, they cannot come and face me.”
Amid a defence built partly on cross-examination about how a confession had been extracted, the presiding judge, Selçuk Aylan, addressed a rumour about his own career that had circulated since the trial opened: "Whoever is saying that is wrong. I have twelve years on the bench and eight as a lawyer." Leaving the room, İmamoğlu told the gallery: "I love you all. Just be honest and stand tall — dishonesty is worth nothing."
The campaign strategist Necati Özkan — a defendant in both the corruption and the espionage files — gave his defence to a full public gallery and a crowded press section. His three siblings travelled from outside Istanbul to hear it.
Campaign director Necati Özkan began his defence; the published text of his statement cites the government's own financial-crimes agency: "MASAK's report could not find a single kuruş of account movement between me or my companies and İBB or its subsidiaries, in either direction." He asked whether running an election campaign was now being treated as organised criminal activity. His defence was unfinished at the close of the fifth week and continued the following Monday.
Melih Geçek, general manager of İSTTELKOM, described a project his team had prepared but never got to launch before his arrest: a year of free internet for students of limited means preparing for exams. “I couldn't be at my daughter's side for her exam,” he said. As the defendants were led out, İmamoğlu came over and hugged him.
Defence lawyer Cansu Çiftçi read from the minutes of a meeting with USOM, Türkiye's national cyber-incident response centre: "no ballot-box data, no data leak" — USOM's own words, she said, against the data-leak allegation in the file. Defendant Nuri Cem Ceylan told the court his father, a police officer, had suffered a brain haemorrhage on duty and that his parents travelled from Kütahya to visit him.
Leaving the courtroom, İmamoğlu said: “Do you know why this file collapsed? Because there is such an unconscionable prosecution. The prosecution is the only criminal organization in this file.” Among the day's defenses, İBB IT staffer Emrah Yüksel said he had gone six months without pay and that the İBB Hanem app had never left its testing phase: “The morning I was detained I hugged my daughter and kissed my son. I lost my father when I was three months old, but separation turned out to be harder than death.”
The release order was given at noon; the first defendants walked out shortly before seven the next morning. Families waited at the roadside through the night rather than in the solidarity tent. One of those released, Özgür Karabat, had been held 308 days.
At the 15th day of hearings the Istanbul 40th Heavy Penal Court ordered 18 defendants released under a travel ban, unanimously — the first releases since the indictment. İmamoğlu and the jailed mayors were not among them. Those freed included İmamoğlu's private-office manager Kadriye Kasapoğlu and the municipal police director Nazan Başelli.
The day before the court's first interim ruling on detention was given over to release requests for the 107 defendants then in custody; 73 were heard, the rest and their lawyers were left for the next morning, with the ruling expected on Thursday. In his opinion read the previous day the prosecutor had asked for seven of them to be released — Sırrı Küçük, Fatih Yağcı, Evren Şirolu, Kadriye Kasapoğlu, Davut Bildik, Ali Üner and Ebubekir Akın.
Mehmet Can Seyhan, lawyer for İmamoğlu's private secretary Kadriye Kasapoğlu, told the court that her father had developed dementia while his daughter was in custody and no longer recognizes her. The same day, the prosecutor requested the release of seven jailed defendants, Kasapoğlu among them.
Canberk Uygur, lawyer for İSFALT deputy general manager Mehmet Karataş, said the accusations against his client had neither happened nor been proven, describing the prosecution's approach as “acting on the logic that even if nothing happened, something must surely have happened,” and argued the file confused his client with another person of the same name. Asked about Karataş, İmamoğlu said: “Forgive me — you are a respected professional, and I am sorry for this situation.”
Ceyhun Avşar, head of İBB's rail systems department, denied the bid-rigging charge and said he allowed no irregularities in his unit of roughly 300 people. Taking the floor after the defense, İmamoğlu himself asked whether Avşar had received any direct or indirect instruction, steering or political pressure; Avşar said nothing of the sort had happened in any area. “I am proud you are my companion on this road,” İmamoğlu told him.
Suspended Beylikdüzü mayor Mehmet Murat Çalık gave his defence in seven sittings over about five hours. He argued that the acts alleged against him predated his mayoralty — that at the time he was a mayoral adviser, not a public official, so the bribery charge could not stand — and said no phone records, technical surveillance or confidential-witness statement supported the case against him. Under questioning from İmamoğlu about pressure on council appointments, he said he had received none. He also complained of the 600-kilometre round trip his family made to attend.
Şişli's jailed mayor Resul Emrah Şahan became the first elected mayor to give his defence. "What is on trial here is the will of the people of Şişli," he said, and closed: "I am here because I did not co-operate with these developers. Had I turned a blind eye to these projects, I would not be here." His statement turned on two Şişli developments — a 72-storey tower his municipality had sealed, and a Nişantaşı residence it had fined over fire risk — in both of which the developer is the source of the bribery allegation against him.
Two weeks into the hearings, Human Rights Watch reported that access to the trial — for journalists, observers and the public — was being obstructed, in a courtroom inside a prison complex where the press seating dispute had already halted a session on 12 March.
Ali Sukas's defense resumed and concluded. His lawyer Kaptan Yılmaz then spent roughly three and a half hours attacking the indictment, arguing the bribery allegations did not match bank and phone records — in one alleged act, he said, the money presented as “evidence of the bribe” was withdrawn from the bank three months later; in another, 22,000 euros had been withdrawn but 30,000 euros allegedly handed over — and asked that his client be assessed over a single act instead of twelve, and released.
İmamoğlu's lawyer Fikret İlkiz explained that his client would give his defence 106th in order. With the court hearing four to eight defendants a week, the schedule placed the central defendant's own account months into the trial — a sequencing that would produce the confrontation of 8 July.
On the first anniversary of the arrest, the President of the Congress of Local and Regional Authorities issued a statement renewing the call for İmamoğlu's release and for an end to the dismissal and detention of elected mayors in Türkiye.
Mehmet Pehlivan, İmamoğlu's lawyer, was jailed pending trial — a step his colleagues called "a black mark in the history of law". The same evening a recording of İmamoğlu was played to a rally at Saraçhane, the square where the protests of March 2025 began: "We will not surrender to the politics of fear."
Ali Sukas, general manager of Ağaç ve Peyzaj A.Ş., gave roughly three hours of defence against twelve counts but could not finish; the day ended at page 45 of a 69-page statement. The remaining 24 pages were left for the hearing after the Ramadan holiday, on 23 March.
The judicial-control measure confining İBB deputy secretary general Mahir Polat to his home — in place for about ten months on health grounds — was lifted and he was freed.
Confessing defendant Ümit Polat's questioning by defense lawyers concluded; saying he had begun taking antidepressants and had not been able to express himself fully the previous day, Polat corrected some statements from his earlier defense. Three jailed defendants — Fatih Yağcı, Ali Üner and Evren Şirolu — then made their defenses in turn; businessman Hüsnü Yüksel Tunar gave the day's fifth and final defense.
Before defence statements could begin, a dispute broke out over where a lawyer-MP was sitting. Presiding judge Selçuk Aylan told CHP Istanbul MP Turan Taşkın Özer, seated in the lawyers' section, to move to the public gallery; Özer said he was a lawyer, Aylan asked whether he held a power of attorney in the case, and Özer said he was following the trial. "If everyone is in their proper place we can conduct a fair trial — I cannot begin like this," Aylan said, and adjourned to the next day. The trial's second week ended before its first hearing had opened.
Questioned about the payments in his statement, the confessor Ümit Polat said: "I am repeating what people were saying — I heard it. I never said in any statement that I saw it." He also described the container as a cargo bag and then as a briefcase. The same week the prosecution projected a table of Ağaç A.Ş. payments that recorded 20 billion lira a month, against the company's actual annual payments of about 5 billion; İmamoğlu objected sharply and the prosecution asked for him to be removed from the courtroom under the code of criminal procedure.
After the break the presiding judge reversed an earlier decision and ordered the press moved to the rear right corner of the hall, where reporters could neither see nor hear the defendants. The journalists' request for a meeting was refused; they did not move, and the court closed the hearing hours early, adjourning to Monday. CHP's provincial chair, speaking outside, said the party had spent weeks preparing so that families, lawyers and press could all fit into the thousand-seat room, and that the move followed a pro-government outlet's claim that a journalist had put a question to İmamoğlu.
Two more investigations began while the İBB trial was under way: a bribery, tender-rigging and money-laundering file in Mersin (28 people detained across two waves; property, vehicles and a boat seized after a financial-crimes report) and a bribery file in Kuşadası, where the mayor was jailed on 16 March.
The third day opened as tensely as the first two. When the detained defendants were brought in and waved to the public gallery, gendarmes pushed İBB department head Yavuz Saltık and intervened against several others; lawyers objected aloud. The courtroom holds about a thousand people: defendants sit at the front with one gendarme each, families are placed at the very back and see them only on the stairs. In the day's defence statement, Bulut Aydöner's lawyer filed İBB's payment records to show that the businessman who accused him of extortion had in fact been paid on time — and that the same witness was under an arrest warrant of his own when he gave the statement.
Hüseyin Ersöz, lawyer for jailed defendant Aykut Erdoğdu, said phone-location records placed his client at cell towers in Fatih, Beyoğlu and Üsküdar within 19 and 23 seconds of each other — physically impossible — and argued the reliability of the evidence was open to question. The presiding judge laid out the schedule: hearings would run Monday to Thursday, the last pre-holiday session would be held on 19 March, and detained defendants' statements were expected to be completed by late April, with an interim ruling on detention to follow.
Nearly a year after his arrest, İmamoğlu appeared before the court in a hearing room inside the Marmara prison complex. He was brought in at 11:00 to applause from the defendants' benches. The presiding panel refused his request to speak, accused him of disrupting proceedings and withdrew; the hearing was adjourned to the afternoon and resumed with an audience at 14:00. His lawyers' motion to recuse the panel was rejected. The whole first day was spent on procedural motions — recusal and joinder requests the court dismissed as "aimed at prolonging the trial" — without reaching identity checks or responses to the indictment; when the prosecutor told İmamoğlu to "know your place," he answered: "Shame on this nation, shame on this country — this is how you flee."
Days before the trial opened, Amnesty International said İmamoğlu faced "an absurd array of 142 charges set out in an almost 4,000 page indictment and carrying a ludicrous jail term of more than 2,300 years," after almost a year in pre-trial detention, and that the politically motivated prosecution raised serious fair-trial concerns. Its 2026 annual report later cited his arrest, alongside that of his lawyer Mehmet Pehlivan, as "perhaps the clearest example of arbitrary detention" by the Turkish government.
The 7th Administrative Chamber of the Istanbul Regional Administrative Court unanimously rejected the request to suspend execution of the annulment decision.
Six days before the trial opened, Human Rights Watch published an assessment of the case against Türkiye's leading opposition figure and the proceedings' compliance with fair-trial standards.
Tanju Özcan was detained on 28 February in an extortion investigation, jailed by the Bolu 2nd Magistrate's Court on 2 March and suspended from office the next day.
Şişli mayor Resul Emrah Şahan and others were released in the "Urban Consensus" file under judicial control. Şahan stayed in prison: he had been jailed separately in the İBB corruption file in September 2025.
Zeydan Karalar was released under judicial control after 212 days in pre-trial detention.
The first hearing in the 200-defendant Aktaş case was held before the Istanbul 1st Heavy Penal Court. On 27 February the court ordered the detained defendants — including the mayors of Avcılar, Seyhan, Ceyhan and Gaziosmanpaşa — to remain in custody.
The Istanbul 14th Heavy Penal Court sentenced Esenyurt's suspended mayor Ahmet Özer to 6 years 3 months for membership of an armed terrorist organisation. His lawyers appealed on 2 March 2026 with a 93-page submission; he remains at liberty pending appeal.
The Istanbul 5th Administrative Court unanimously rejected İmamoğlu's case against the annulment. Its reasoning found the university to have acted wrongly in the original transfer, but held that the applicant had been aware of the irregularities.
The Antalya Chief Public Prosecutor's Office filed a 702-page indictment seeking between 15 years 6 months and 44 years for 41 defendants, including the suspended metropolitan mayor. The Antalya 6th Heavy Penal Court accepted it on 15 February 2026.
The court accepted the indictment, ordered all detained defendants to remain in custody and set the first hearing for 9 March 2026 at 10:00 in a courtroom inside the Marmara prison complex at Silivri. In its scheduling order the court set a maximum trial duration of 4,600 days — about twelve and a half years.
The Istanbul Chief Public Prosecutor's Office filed its indictment against 402 suspects, of whom 105 were in pre-trial detention. It seeks up to 2,352 years' imprisonment for İmamoğlu on 142 counts and alleges he ran a "criminal organisation established for profit" from 2015, when he was mayor of Beylikdüzü. Journalists are among the accused.
The court dismissed the party's challenge, leaving Gürsel Tekin's committee in place; a further ruling on 21 November confirmed that the trusteeship would continue.
While already in pre-trial detention in the corruption file, İmamoğlu was placed under a separate detention order on a charge of political espionage — the second file that would have to end before he could leave prison.
Prosecutors filed the indictment built around businessman Aziz İhsan Aktaş, naming 200 defendants including several jailed mayors. A separate 578-page indictment covering the Beşiktaş file sought up to 704 years for its principal defendant.
The CHP held an extraordinary provincial congress at which Özgür Çelik was re-elected as sole candidate with 386 delegate votes. He received his certificate from the Supreme Election Council but could not take office because the trustee order remained in force.
Hasan Mutlu was detained on 13 September in a corruption investigation into Bayrampaşa municipality, jailed on 16 September on embezzlement, extortion, bribery and tender charges, and suspended from office the following day.
Riot police blocked access to the party's provincial headquarters as the trustee committee sought to take office; supporters gathered outside and clashes followed.
The Istanbul 45th Civil Court removed provincial chairman Özgür Çelik and his board by interim order and appointed a five-member trustee committee headed by former CHP deputy Gürsel Tekin. The order followed an investigation into allegations of vote-buying at party congresses.
İnan Güney was detained on 15 August in the İBB corruption investigation, jailed on 19 August and suspended from office the same day. He would spend almost eleven months in prison before his release in July 2026.
Executives of İSFALT (road construction) and the İETT transport authority were detained on 29 July over tender allegations; several were jailed on 1 August, while İETT's general manager was released under judicial control.
Ahmet Özer was ordered released in the "Urban Consensus" case but remained in prison because of a separate detention order in the Aktaş tender file — the double-file pattern that recurs throughout this record.
Adana metropolitan mayor Zeydan Karalar and Antalya metropolitan mayor Muhittin Böcek were detained and jailed; Adıyaman mayor Abdurrahman Tutdere was placed under house arrest with an electronic tag. Within days all three were suspended from office by the Interior Ministry.
Former İzmir metropolitan mayor Tunç Soyer was detained in an operation covering 157 people on charges of rigging tenders and aggravated fraud, and was jailed on 4 July; 45 people were jailed in the same operation.
Detention orders were issued for 47 people including five sitting mayors — Büyükçekmece, Gaziosmanpaşa and Avcılar in Istanbul, and Seyhan and Ceyhan in Adana. Twenty-two people were jailed on bribery and extortion charges between 3 and 4 June; the mayors were suspended from office by the Interior Ministry within days.
Forty-six people were detained in an operation covering İSTAÇ, KİPTAŞ and the roads department; 25 were jailed and 21 released under judicial control. Executives of the construction group Yapı Merkezi were among those jailed, extending the file beyond municipal staff to private counterparties.
Ertan Yıldız, chair of the İBB assembly's subsidiaries committee, gave a second statement under Türkiye's "effective remorse" provisions; the prosecution accepted it and he was released to house arrest the same day. Statements obtained this way became a central and contested pillar of the eventual indictment.
Detention orders were issued for 22 people and 20 were taken into custody; the court jailed 13 and released seven under judicial control. Those jailed worked in İBB's media and promotion units, among them the head of press and public relations, Taner Çetin.
The European Parliament adopted its report on Türkiye by 367 votes to 74, with 188 abstentions. Paragraph 21 says Parliament is "extremely concerned by the recent arrest and removal from office" of İmamoğlu and the mayors of Şişli and Beylikdüzü, notes the cases were opened days before his nomination as presidential candidate and the day after the annulment of his degree, and "considers that this is a politically motivated move aimed at preventing a legitimate challenge." The report holds that accession talks cannot resume in the current circumstances. Türkiye's foreign ministry rejected the report the same day as "disconnected from reality."
A delegation of the Congress of Local and Regional Authorities visited Türkiye on 5–6 May and met İmamoğlu in detention. It reiterated its call for his immediate release, stating that it was "unacceptable, under the rule of law, to deprive Istanbul of its elected mayor by detaining him without trial or substantiated charges."
A second round of detentions covered the municipality's water utility and central administration, with 53 detention orders issued. Eighteen people were jailed pending trial, 26 released under judicial control and four placed under house arrest. On 30 April the magistracy refused arrest requests for İSKİ general manager Şafak Başa and department head Adem Şanlısoy as disproportionate, imposing house arrest with electronic tags instead — measures that ran for over 200 days.
PACE adopted an urgent-procedure resolution saying the arrest and detention "appear politically motivated", calling for İmamoğlu's immediate release, for unfounded charges against him and others in the same investigation to be dropped, and for the university's annulment of his degree to be repealed.
The Congress of Local and Regional Authorities of the Council of Europe held an urgent debate at its 48th session in Strasbourg and adopted a declaration on the dismissal of mayors in Türkiye, urging the authorities to release the detained mayors — İmamoğlu among them — and to stop dismissing and detaining elected local officials. Its president, Marc Cools, had already called the detention "an assault on democracy" and demanded İmamoğlu's immediate release.
Six days after the detentions, the UN Human Rights Office said in Geneva it was "very concerned" by the detention of at least 92 people including "Istanbul's democratically-elected mayor," and by "unlawful blanket bans on protests" that had led to over 1,000 detentions including at least nine media workers. It said all those held for the legitimate exercise of their rights "must be released immediately and unconditionally," and that those facing charges must be guaranteed due process and a fair trial, including a lawyer of their own choosing.
Reporters Without Borders condemned the arrest of journalists — among them AFP photographer Yasin Akgül and freelance photojournalist Bülent Kılıç — detained on 24 March while covering the demonstrations and prosecuted under the law on public meetings. RSF's Türkiye representative said searches of the journalists' belongings had been "solely intended to identify their sources." Journalists would later appear among the defendants in the İBB indictment itself.
A duty magistrate ordered İmamoğlu jailed pending trial in the corruption file and he was sent to Marmara (Silivri) prison; twenty people were jailed that day, and he was then suspended from the mayoralty by the Interior Ministry. The CHP held its presidential primary regardless: as sole candidate he received about 14.85 million votes.
Amnesty International said the detention of more than 100 people including the mayor of Istanbul represented "a massive escalation in the Turkish authorities' ongoing crackdown on peaceful dissent." In November 2025, after 87 protesters, journalists and lawyers detained during the March demonstrations were acquitted, it asked why they had been "put through an eight-month ordeal" and called for an end to the misuse of the criminal-justice system against dissent.
Protests began in almost every province, the largest street mobilisation in Türkiye in more than a decade. Interior Minister Ali Yerlikaya said 1,133 people were detained between 19 and 23 March 2025.
The Istanbul Chief Public Prosecutor's Office issued detention orders for 106 people across two separate investigations — one for corruption in municipal tenders, one for terrorism. Among them were İmamoğlu, İBB media board chair Murat Ongun, deputy secretary general Mahir Polat, Şişli mayor Resul Emrah Şahan and Beylikdüzü mayor Mehmet Murat Çalık. The operation fell on the day his party was to confirm him as its candidate for the 2028 presidential election.
One day before his detention, Istanbul University annulled the undergraduate degree İmamoğlu obtained after a 1990 transfer. A university degree is a constitutional precondition for standing for president in Türkiye; the annulment therefore removed his eligibility as well as his diploma. The Council of Europe later called for the decision to be repealed.
The Istanbul Chief Public Prosecutor's Office opened an investigation into İmamoğlu's university degree, five years after the first tip-off reached the state complaints line in February 2020. He gave a statement on 5 March 2025; the university annulled 28 degrees, his among them, on 18 March.
Deputy mayors of Kartal and Ataşehir were detained by the counter-terrorism branch and jailed on 13 February on a charge of membership of an armed terrorist organisation. The file, known as the "Kent Uzlaşısı" (Urban Consensus) investigation, would later be joined to the case against senior İBB figures.
Rıza Akpolat was detained by the Istanbul Chief Public Prosecutor's Office on a charge of forming a criminal organisation, and was jailed pending trial on 17 January 2025. As of the latest count he has been deprived of liberty longer than any other official in this record.
Ahmet Özer, mayor of the Istanbul district of Esenyurt, was detained and jailed pending trial on a charge of membership of the PKK/KCK. A deputy governor of Istanbul was appointed to run the municipality in his place — the first trustee appointment of the sequence that would follow.
Download events.json Record as of 2026-09-22
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Part of the 2024–2025 scaffold comes from chp.report, an advocacy platform documenting detained CHP officials. Its dates and recorded acts are used; its framing is not. Reading the same convention in reverse: pro-government outlets are used the same way, for what happened and when, never for what it meant.
Almost everything here is pending. Defendants are defendants: an indictment is an allegation, a detention is not a conviction, and a sentence under appeal is not final. Where a court has ruled, the ruling is stated as the court's, not as the truth of the matter.
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