“Charisma” has long been a substantial keyword when it comes to the sociological structure of Turkish politics, bearing a strong significance in the country’s power struggles. Indeed, charismatic leadership works; a political protagonist needs to show off as a strong, ironfisted, hectoring, resolute and even stubborn character to be acclaimed in this country; a premise that arguably clarifies the reason why democracy faces obstacles to settle institutionally in Türkiye.

As such, the end of the 20th century marked equally the end of a long line of charismatic Turkish political leaders: Suleyman Demirel, ‘Sulo the Shepherd’, seven-times elected prime minister and finally the ninth successor of Kemal Ataturk’s seat as the president; Bulent Ecevit, ‘Man of the People’ and once the hero of Turkish social democrats; Necmettin Erbakan, ‘The Hodja’, a flag carrier of Islamist movement and Alparslan Turkes, ‘The Chieftain’, a former junta member colonel and the historic leader of neo-fascist Grey Wolves. It was time for another charismatic figure to raise: Recep Tayyip Erdogan. He said “Things will never gonna be the same again” in August 14th, 2001, in his first ever speech as the leader of AK Party. And he was right.

During his period of reign as a strong, ironfisted, hectoring, resolute and even stubborn character for 20 years, his main opposition party CHP wasn’t able to muster an equally charismatic leader—not until the 2019 local elections. By 2019, the CHP picked the mayor of Beylikduzu, a small district of Istanbul to run for the mayorship of the greater Istanbul metropolitan: Ekrem Imamoğlu. By winning the elections, Imamoğlu put an end to the 25 years of right-wing administration of Istanbul province.

Who is Ekrem Imamoğlu?

Ekrem Imamoğlu was born in 1970 in Trabzon province, located at the eastern Blacksea coast of Türkiye, a close neighbor of Rize province where Erdogan has his family roots. According to his official website, Imamoğlu went to Cyprus for college. After studying two years at the civil engineering department of Eastern Mediterranean University and Kyrenia American University in the northern part of the island under Turkish rule, he had an undergraduate transfer to Istanbul University, where he graduated in 1994.

In the early 2025, however, the undergraduate transfer of Imamoğlu became a litigious question whose outcome saw Imamoğlu’s diploma anulled following a suing case brought by Istanbul’s Provincial Attorney General—a controversial verdict as Article 101 of Turkish Constitution says “The President of the Republic shall be elected directly by the public from among Turkish citizens over forty years of age, who are eligible to be a member of the parliament and have completed higher education”. Safe to say the action once again raised significant questions on the politisation of Türkiye’s judiciary.

In 1994 following his now-cancelled graduation, Imamoğlu started working at his family’s contracting company, later becoming a member of Republican People’s Party (CHP) in 2008 and an elected Mayor of Beylikduzu district in 2014. His growing success eventually shifted public attention towards himself and away from both his party’s central bodies and AKP. Coming from a construction business, Imamoğlu’s municipal actions were focused on revitalising public facilities. Known for his informal public appearances, his charismatic character took centre stage as he visited cafes, factories, schools, mosques and provided social welfare aids to families that suffer from poverty.

Then-covering Imamoğlu, local journalist Abbas Karakaya wrote that a ‘Beylikduzu model’ was emerging with the mayor’s actions. Karakaya nonetheless described this model as ‘simply an AKP municipalism with a social democrat tone.’ That said, people of Beylikduzu eventually grew to strongly support their mayor according BBC Turkish Service’s coverage. Ultimately, CHP leadership decided on his name to run against AKP’s candidate Binali Yildirim, a close aide of Erdogan in 2019 Local Elections for Istanbul Metropolitan Mayorship.

2019 Local Elections

Imamoğlu took 48,77% of the votes, while his AKP rival Binali Yildirim reached 48,61%, marking a tiny gap of just 0,16 points. AKP’s reaction was an objection application and demanding the rerun of the election. When the dilemma arrived to the Supreme Election Board, the Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality Mayoral Election was annulled, justifying the verdict by the claim of “appointing unauthorized ballot box committee chairpersons” and ruled for a rerun.

Such a verdict was critisized by the EU. Kati Piri, the European Parliament’s then-Türkiye rapporteur, said the decision “ends the credibility of democratic transition of power through elections” in the country.

The elections renewed on June 23rd, resulting with an increase of support for Imamoğlu, taking 54% of the vote, marking this time an overwhelming and resolute result.

2024 Local Elections

During his firs term in the office, actions of Imamoğlu prioritised renewing the city’s infrastructure and increasing the quality and accessibility of Istanbul’s public transportation system. His policies were exemplified by the construction of new metro lines, as the metropole’s critical issue, by hosting about 16 million residents was—and still is—the traffic jam.

The March 2024 local elections were a decisive victory both for Ekrem Imamoğlu in Istanbul and the opposition in a national scale. Indeed, CHP emerged as the top party nationwide for the first time since Ecevit’s leadership in 1977. In announcing the opposition’s win, France24 emblematically used the words of Erdogan, “a turning point”, as its main headline. Specifically, Imamoğlu took 51,21% of the votes in Istanbul, 11% points ahead of his AKP rival, while CHP became the first party throughout the country with 37% of the national votes in total 81 provinces.

Yes, it was a turning point as Erdogan said. But, for who? And how?

Imamoğlu for President?

As a former Istanbul mayor himself from 1994 to 1998, Recep Tayyip Erdogan coined a now-maxim in Turkish politics: “Whoever wins Istanbul wins Türkiye.” Does, therefore, the AKP’s resounding defeat spell the end of Erdogan’s power? According to Erdogan himself, no; as Kaya Genc quotes in The Nation, while highlighting how the motto now probably haunts him.

Imamoğlu’s accession as the favorite among the opposition to be the next President took shape since he took the office of Istanbul’s mayorship in 2019. Prominent pro-Erdogan journalist Nagehan Alci wrote in 2022 that “Imamoğlu wants to run for presidency, he wants it with every cell of his body.”

Prof. Ozer Sencar, chairperson of ‘Metropoll Research’ said also in 2022 that Imamoğlu was a rival of both the government and the opposition in terms of presidential candidacy, referring to the intraparty opposition in CHP against Imamoğlu.

Meral Aksener, former leader of right wing IYI Party, a member of “The Table of Six” -a six-party opposition alliance in 2023 presidential elections- was in favor of Imamoğlu’s candidacy against Erdogan. She even temporarily withdrew from the aforesaid opposition alliance over the conflict on determining the candidate. Consequently, The Table of Six decided on Kemal Kilicdaroglu, then leader of CHP, to run for presidency in 2023 elections. Aksener, an Imamoğlu supporter sat back at the ‘Table’, just not to break the historic alliance. Bu Kilicdaroglu lost and Imamoğlu kept staying at Istanbul mayoral office.

CHP’s current leader, Ozgur Ozel thinks that Imamoğlu or Mansur Yavas (Mayor of Ankara) could win if any of them ran against Erdogan in 2023, as he said in an interview last year.

A limited 2023 survey of Sencar’s Metropoll Research also shows that the public believe Imamoğlu could win, if The Table of Six decided him against Erdogan.

In November 2023, CHP’s 38th congress elected Ozgur Ozel as the new leader of the party. This paved the way for Imamoğlu to gain mass support from his party to run for presidency in the 2028 presidential elections. The party decided to make an open primary to let its members decide who the presidential candidate should be. The primary was planned to take place on March 23rd, 2025 and Ekrem Imamoğlu was the only candidate. He was expected to officially be announced  as CHP’s presidential candidate. But suddenly, there came the operation of March 19th, four days before the party’s primary.

The operation of March 19th 

On March 28th, 2025, Ekrem Imamoğlu wrote a guest essay to The New York Times, from Silivri Jailhouse where he is now imprisoned:

“Early in the morning on March 19, dozens of armed police officers showed up at my door with a detention order. The scene resembled the capture of a terrorist, not of the elected mayor of Istanbul, Turkey’s largest city.

The move — four days before my party, the Republican People’s Party, held a primary for the next presidential race — was dramatic but hardly unexpected. It followed months of escalating legal harassment of me, culminating in the abrupt revocation of my university diploma 31 years after I had graduated. Authorities seemed to believe this would disqualify me from the race because the Constitution requires the president to have a degree in higher education.

Realizing he cannot defeat me at the ballot box, Turkey’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, has resorted to other means: having his main political opponent arrested on charges of corruption, bribery, leading a criminal network and aiding the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party, even though the charges lack credible evidence. I was suspended from my elected office over the financial charges.”

The charges of corruption, bribery and leading a criminal network are open to discussion and still a matter for the court to decide. That said, the suddenness of the imprisonment and subsequent briefness of the interim verdict of dismissal from his office were largely accepted as a violation of the rule of law and foundational democratic principles.

Besides Imamoğlu, 87 personnel of Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality were also detained as a part of the police operation, under the demand and supervision of Istanbul’s Provincial Chief Prosecutor.

Four days after the detention of Imamoğlu, CHP made its presidential primary, which was extended as being open for all citizens to show their solidarity, not just CHP members. About 15 million citizens went to polls and voted for Imamoğlu’s candidacy. Based on primary results, CHP announced the jailed mayor as the party’s official presidential candidate for 2028 elections.

The European response

No substantial condemnation came from the EU Comission or major member states of the Union. The Council of Europe simply condemned the arrest.

“The imprisonment of Istanbul Mayor Ekrem Imamoğlu and many other prominent figures constitutes a serious attack on democracy,” the French Foreign Ministry said in a recent statement.

“The PES is in Istanbul to stand with the Turkish democratic opposition in their call to Erdogan to stop the arrests and to free political prisoners,” Party of European Socialists Chairperson Stefan Löfven said after their visit to Imamoğlu in Silivri Prison, along with Vice President of the European Parliament Katarina Barley and MEPs Dario Nardella and Evin Incir.

“The EU urges the Turkish authorities to provide full transparency and to follow due process,” said in a joint statement by High Representative/Vice-President Kaja Kallas and Commissioner Marta Kos.

According to the Euronews, the reaction was notably more “restrained”, reflecting the tightrope that Brussels is trying to walk with Ankara:

“Turkey’s strategic importance for the bloc has been amplified by two recent geopolitical developments: the fall of Bashar al-Assad in Syria and the negotiations launched by Donald Trump to end Russia’s war on Ukraine.

President Erdoğan has expressed a keen interest in the coalition of the willing that France and the United Kingdom have established to provide security guarantees for Kyiv and safeguard a potential settlement with Moscow. Turkey has the second-largest military in NATO and enjoys a strategically valuable location in the Black Sea.

Erdoğan has taken part in several virtual meetings with European leaders, most recently on Friday, when he was briefed by Ursula von der Leyen, the president of the European Commission; António Costa, the president of the European Council; and High Representative Kaja Kallas about the results of an EU summit in Brussels.

Additionally, the European Commission plans to hold two high-level dialogues with Turkey in the coming weeks focused on the economy and migration.”

It seems the Russian threat and troubles with the Trump administration increased the importance of Ankara’s cooperation for the EU, leaving the Imamoğlu case under the dark shadow of global pandemonium, embracing the—hopefully—temporary approach that democracy shall wait till the bigger crisis gets over.

What next?

The opposition in Türkiye demands a snap presidential election, leaning on the greatest mass protests since the Gezi Park protests in 2013 and nearly 15 million votes Imamoğlu took in CHP’s open primary. However, President Erdogan needs a constitutional amendment to run for the third time for presidency. So, it’s ‘constitution first, elections then’ for Erdogan.

According to ‘those in-the-know’, Erdogan wants to negotiate the constitutional amendment with CHP, using Imamoğlu’s imprisonment and diploma annulment as a trump card. Weeks before Imamoğlu’s detention, Mucahit Birinci, a prominent AKP member lawyer tweeted “I have a piece of advice for the CHP, on the occasion of this [diploma] investigation: You still have the opportunity to shake hands with the government on a constitutional amendment, that will reduce the election eligibility for the Presidency to ‘high school graduation’ level. My advice to the CHP is that instead of defending ‘forgery’, if they absolutely want Ekrem to be their candidate, they should follow the path I recommend.”

Pro-opposition journalist Yilmaz Özdil thinks the same: “[AK Party] always leaves the door open for negotiations in all trials that it uses the judiciary as a political instrument. Recep Tayyip Erdogan has the ability to negotiate. And I’m sure as the wind blows, he’s negotiating with Imamoğlu and CHP headquarters now.”

When viewed from this aspect, the CHP’s recent boycott campaign would also be another step in this so-called negotiation. And according to this “theory”, the surtext of Erdogan’s move is “OK, run for the presidency; but you have to run against me. So let’s change the constitution and you’ll be free.”

According to Esen and Gumuscu, “Erdogan made an unprecedented move to turn Turkey into a hegemonic authoritarian regime where elections no longer matter. However, neither the Turkish economy nor Turkish political culture provides fertile ground for establishing a full autocracy. (…) Turkish people have boldly demonstrated their commitment to democracy by taking to the streets despite mounting police violence.”

Ekrem Imamoğlu bears a sufficient level of charisma that Turkish people traditionally seek out. As a strong, ironfisted, hectoring, resolute and even stubborn character, he gives the Turkish public a sense that he can use his charisma and power to restore or even rebuild Turkish democracy. His party, the CHP and its leadership now holds the helm of the mass opposition move that struggles for a secular and democratic Türkiye, either by negotiating with a government that has an autocratic tendency, driving a no-shopping boycott or direct street demonstrations. Just like The Economist writes, Turkiye is nearing a point of no return. At that point, the country will either join the league of Asian autocracies or change its course back to pluralist, libertarian and democratic tradition. For that to happen, all hopes of the opposition are attached to a person in jail. Will he be another Nelson Mandela? Getting out of prison and settling in the presidential palace? The ones who survive, will see.