# Ekrem İmamoğlu The Republican People's Party (CHP) politician whose 2019 capture of Istanbul broke [[Recep Tayyip Erdoğan]]'s party's quarter-century hold on Turkey's largest city — and who has since become the regime's most prominent political prisoner. Istanbul is where Erdoğan himself launched his career; losing it was a symbolic blow, and İmamoğlu's rise made him the opposition's most plausible challenger for the presidency. ## The mayor Erdoğan could not beat at the ballot box İmamoğlu won the March 2019 mayoral election narrowly; when authorities annulled the result and ordered a re-run, he won the **June 2019 re-run by a far larger margin** — a humiliation for the ruling AKP. He was re-elected decisively in 2024 and was widely expected to be the CHP's candidate against Erdoğan. ## Lawfare and imprisonment Unable to defeat him electorally, the state moved through the courts. İmamoğlu was **arrested in March 2025**, his university diploma annulled (a constitutional prerequisite for the presidency), and he was charged in overlapping corruption and "political espionage" cases. The espionage trial — alleging that data from an Istanbul municipal app was used to influence the 2019 election — **opened on May 11, 2026**; on May 13 a court ordered his continued pretrial detention, and proceedings were adjourned to July, with İmamoğlu facing up to 20 years. Human-rights organizations and Western governments describe the prosecutions as politically motivated lawfare designed to remove Erdoğan's strongest rival. His arrest triggered the largest street protests in Turkey in over a decade. ## Related - [[International Democratic Opposition Hub]] - [[Özgür Özel]] - [[Recep Tayyip Erdoğan]]