Analysis
Smart, independent reporting on Turkey's politics, economy and foreign affairs.
DEM Party Deputy Parliamentary Group Chair Gülistan Kılıç Koçyiğit has renewed her party’s call for the National Solidarity, Brotherhood and Democracy Commission to visit imprisoned PKK leader Abdullah Öcalan on İmralı Island.
In Turkish, teşhirci (exhibitionist) is a word with two lives. In everyday use, it is an insult, hurled at women whose clothes are judged too revealing or at men who flaunt their cars and watches. In the Criminal Code, however, teşhircilik has a very precise meaning: exhibitionism. Article 225 punishes those who “publicly exhibit their sexual organs” with up to six months in prison. A word meant to describe a trench-coat flasher in a public park has, over time, swollen into a moral cudgel: used less to prosecute streakers and more to police women’s bodies.
Istanbul’s Beyoğlu Mayor İnan Güney has become the 16th CHP mayor sent to prison as part of a widening corruption probe targeting opposition-run municipalities.
Journalist Fatih Altaylı, imprisoned in Silivri, conducted an interview through lawyers with CHP presidential candidate Ekrem İmamoğlu, who is also held in the same prison in a different cell.The interview's high point was when İmamoğlu disclosed that he has been learning Kurdish.
Ahead of renewed hopes for a peace process, Sözcü — known for its opposition stance — has stirred controversy with successive headlines alleging the mass release of PKK-linked prisoners. The Justice Ministry has twice rejected the newspaper’s reports, which first claimed 200 prisoners had been released and later suggested an additional 700 would follow.
One of the prosecutors overseeing the case against Istanbul Mayor Ekrem İmamoğlu has come under fire after CHP Chair Özgür Özel revealed that the prosecutor displays a model of a Beyaz Toros—a car widely associated with disappearances and state violence in the 1990s. İmamoğlu, who has been held at Silivri Prison since his March 19 arrest, recounted the incident during an interview with journalist Ruşen Çakır of Medyascope as he visited the Istanbul Mayor in prison. İmamoğlu said the prosecutor, who took his testimony following the sweeping police operation, placed a symbolic image of the white Renault Toros on his desk and ended the interrogation by saying: “Tomorrow you become president, then you judge us.”
Journalist Fatih Altaylı, who has been detained at Silivri Prison since June 22 on allegations of threatening the president in remarks on his YouTube channel, has an indictment filed against him that calls for as much as five years in jail.
Jailed Istanbul Metropolitan Mayor Ekrem İmamoğlu was acquitted of charges of “targeting public officials involved in counterterrorism” but was convicted of “publicly insulting a public official due to his duty” and “making threats” in the case concerning Istanbul Chief Public Prosecutor Akın Gürlek. The court sentenced İmamoğlu to one year and five months in prison for the insult charge and an additional two months and 15 days for the threat charge, totaling one year and eight months. If upheld by the appeals court, the ruling could result in a political ban.
The possibility the trial of imprisoned Istanbul Mayor Ekrem İmamoğlu could be televised by state broadcaster TRT has sparked rare agreement among political rivals. President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan endorsed MHP Chair Devlet Bahçeli’s call for the hearings to be aired live. Justice Minister Yılmaz Tunç also weighed in, saying that Parliament can act on the matter if there is consensus.
We begin with a cliché frequently heard in a negative context when discussing Turkey’s political and social developments: “This can’t be happening too!” During the operation targeting Istanbul Mayor Ekrem İmamoğlu, nearly 100 people—one of them Mahir Polat—were detained. Who is Mahir Polat? He is the deputy secretary general of the municipality and a close member of İmamoğlu’s core team. That much may be understandable. But Polat’s imprisonment triggered yet another “this can’t be happening” moment.
“The first political party leader to be arrested since the September 12, 1980, military coup era after Selahattin Demirtaş.” The arrest of Zafer Party Chair Ümit Özdağ was reported in the media with this headline. However, there is no other similarity that would warrant him being mentioned in the same sentence as Demirtaş. In fact, they belong to entirely different worlds and are entirely opposing figures. Özdağ has been in custody at Silivri Prison for a month since Jan. 21, 2025.