Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Saturday said that he had “nothing to do” with the arrest of Istanbul’s opposition mayor, because of which the latter won’t be able to fray in the presidential election scheduled for June 2023.
The prison sentence of Ekrem Imamoglu, after his politically ignited defamation court trial, stirred an international storm. The mayor has been sentenced to imprisonment for two years and seven months after he insulted the Supreme Electoral Council’s members in Turkey. As per reports, in a speech he gave in 2019, the mayor said that “those who cancelled March 31 elections are fools”.
However, President Erdogan maintained that he had no role in the court’s verdict.
“What is behind the storm sparked by a verdict these past few days? This debate has nothing to do with us — neither with me nor with our nation,” said Erdogan, while making his first comments on the issue since the verdict was given on Wednesday.
“We laugh at all the false words uttered so surely by those seeing a political manoeuvre in the sentence. But we are sad to see that some are trying to conduct their games of thrones through us,” he added, indicating that reactions to the court’s verdict were a result of rivalries present within the opposition.
WATCH| Turkey: Headscarf debate reaches Parliament; Turkish feminists condemn Erdogan’s move
On Thursday, thousands of people protested in Istanbul in support of Imamoglu, who had established himself as an opposition candidate who can break the two-decade dominance of Erdogan over Turkish politics, after clinching his mayoral success.
The imprisonment of Imamoglu also received international criticism. On Thursday, the United States announced that it is “deeply troubled and disappointed” with his conviction and imposed a ban on any political activity, which eventually denies him to run for the presidency. Meanwhile, Germany called it a “harsh blow for democracy”.
(With inputs from agencies)
