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Turkish police have arrested dozens of people accused of insulting President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and his family during street protests sparked by the arrest of his chief rival this week.
The jailing of Istanbul mayor Ekrem İmamoğlu, the country’s most popular politician, has set off political and financial turmoil in Turkey, igniting the biggest public protests in more than a decade and prompting investors to sell Turkish assets.
The latest arrests were announced after the opposition said it would wind down a week of demonstrations outside Istanbul’s city hall but called on people to boycott companies that it said support the government.
Turkey’s finance minister and central bank governor were due to hold a conference call with investors in London on Tuesday to reassure investors that they will stick with a recovery programme for the $1.3tn economy.
Imamoglu’s arrest on March 19 on corruption charges, which he denies, was a dramatic escalation in Erdoğan’s crackdown on the opposition. Tens of thousands of people have taken to the streets, fearing that Turkey’s longest-serving leader has become autocratic.
The 71-year-old president has called the protests “street terrorism” and insisted that the judiciary acted independently against İmamoğlu. On Monday, Erdoğan accused the main opposition Republican People’s party (CHP) of committing “evil to the country” by calling for the demonstrations.
Police have detained 43 “provocateurs” and were seeking more suspects after protesters allegedly made “vile insults against our president, his late mother and family”, interior minister Ali Yerlikaya said on X early on Tuesday.
At least 1,133 other people have been arrested at protests around the country. A journalists’ union said police had raided the homes of 11 reporters and photographers covering the demonstrations and taken them into custody on Monday.
CHP party leader Özgür Özel said that a rally on Tuesday night would be the opposition’s last at city hall and that the city council on Wednesday would elect a CHP member to stand in for İmamoğlu in an effort to prevent the government from seizing control of the municipality.
Özel on Tuesday visited İmamoğlu in a prison west of Istanbul, where several political dissidents are held. He described the mayor and two other CHP mayors arrested with him as having their “heads held high”.
“I’m ashamed in the name of those governing Turkey for the situation it is in,” he said outside Silivri prison. “They thought it would be so easy to say, ‘Since I can’t and won’t be able to defeat İmamoğlu, I will just get rid of him.’ They didn’t take into account” the backlash, he said.
The CHP has called on supporters to shun companies it says back Erdoğan’s government, ranging from a chain of coffee shops to booksellers and a tour operator.
The party has tapped into malaise over the economy, with inflation running at almost 40 per cent. In municipal elections last year, the CHP won the largest vote share nationwide, delivering Erdoğan’s biggest setback in two decades.
İmamoğlu defeated Erdoğan’s handpicked candidate for mayor of Turkey’s largest city, winning re-election by more than 11 percentage points. He has consistently outperformed Erdoğan in surveys of voters’ next choice for president, though elections are not scheduled until 2028.
Investors fled Turkish assets last week, forcing the central bank to sell billions of dollars of foreign currency reserves to bolster the lira.
Finance minister Mehmet Şimşek and central bank governor Fatih Karahan are holding a call with global investors “to evaluate the latest developments in the Turkish economy”, said Şimşek’s office.
