Turkey detains lawyer of jailed Istanbul mayor, main opposition party says

Turkish authorities have detained a lawyer for jailed Istanbul Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu, President Tayyip Erdogan's biggest political rival, an MP of the main opposition Republican People's Party (CHP) said on Friday.

Imamoglu, a CHP member who leads Erdogan in some polls, was jailed on Sunday pending trial on graft allegations, provoking the largest anti-government protests in a decade that led to mass arrests nationwide.

 

Mehmet Pehlivan, a lawyer who defended Imamoglu in the latest investigation, was detained "for fabricated reasons", CHP MP Turan Taskin Ozer said in a post on X, without giving details.

 

Private broadcaster Haberturk later reported that the lawyer was detained on charges of "laundering assets derived from a criminal act".

 

Imamoglu, who has been temporarily dismissed from his job because of the case, demanded the immediate release of his lawyer.

 

"As if the coup on democracy wasn't enough, they can't stand the victims of this coup defending themselves," Imamoglu said on X.

 

Imamoglu's CHP, other opposition parties, rights groups and Western powers have all said the case against the mayor was a politicised effort to eliminate a potential electoral threat to Erdogan.

 

The government denies any influence over the judiciary and says the courts are independent.

 

Separately, two journalists who covered the anti-government protests in Istanbul were detained early on Friday, the Journalists' Union of Turkey said.

 

The detention of the journalists came a day after a Turkish court freed seven other journalists, including an Agence France-Presse photojournalist Yasin Akgul, who were earlier jailed for "attending an illegal march" while covering the last week's mass protests.

 

The CHP has called on Turks to continue protesting, saying it would organise rallies and gatherings at different locations in Istanbul and elsewhere. Erdogan has dismissed the protests as a "show" and warned of legal consequences for protesters.

 

Protests, particularly by university students in Istanbul and Ankara, continued on Thursday and police detained many protesters, Haberturk and other Turkish media reported.

 

Also on Thursday, Interior Minister Ali Yerlikaya said 1,879 people had been detained since the protests began more than a week ago, adding that courts jailed 260 of them pending trial.

 

The CHP has called a mass rally in Istanbul's Maltepe district on Saturday.