Last Wednesday, the mayor of Istanbul, Ekrem Imamoğlu, was arrested at his home on charges of “corruption” and “aiding the terrorist organization PKK.” Imamoğlu, who is seen as the main rival of Turkish president Recep Tayyip, is among the country’s most popular political figures. He was imprisoned on Sunday, March 23, and “suspended from office,” according to the Turkish Interior Ministry. The Istanbul city council is set to elect a deputy mayor on Wednesday, March 26. Even after spending his first night in prison, Imamoğlu was officially nominated on Monday as the presidential candidate of the Republican People’s Party (CHP) for the 2028 elections, following primaries held on Sunday in which he won with 15 million votes, including 13.2 million from outside the CHP.
Immediately after his arrest, massive protests broke out in the capital, and since then, people have heeded the CHP’s call to hold nightly rallies denouncing what many Turks now refer to as the “March 19 coup.” These protests have been fiercely repressed by Erdoğan’s regime with tear gas and water cannons, and over 1,100 protesters have been arrested “as part of illegal activities” since last Wednesday, according to Turkish interior minister Ali Yerlikaya. Turkish authorities, who banned gatherings and restricted access to social media at the start of the movement, also requested the blocking of more than 700 accounts on the social network X.
Imamoğlu’s arrest and the brutal repression of protests represent an unprecedented repressive escalation by Erdoğan, who is leading a sweeping authoritarian crackdown and has had nearly 50,000 political opponents arrested in recent months, including the leader of the CHP youth wing as well as many journalists and artists. But the growing movement is opening a breach and rekindling the specter of political crisis in Turkey.
A Massive and Historic Movement
The current mobilization is the largest since the Gezi Park movement in 2013, when an environmental protest to save a park in central Istanbul spiraled into the biggest anti-government movement in Turkey in the last 40 years. According to AFP tallies, protests have occurred in at least 55 of Turkey’s 81 provinces since last Wednesday. Although triggered by Imamoğlu’s arrest, the protests reflect a deep-seated anger among the Turkish population, with unemployment among youth under 25 reaching 14.9 percent and annual inflation standing at 44.4 percent as of December 2024. Protesters are also denouncing the widespread corruption that helps Erdoğan’s AKP stay in power and the regime’s authoritarianism, in a country where 90 percent of media outlets are owned by pro-government corporations and independent journalists are regularly imprisoned.
In the protests, slogans like “Government resign!” or “Down with the AKP dictatorship!” express a strong desire to oust Erdoğan and his party. The protests also prominently feature youth, who appear “more organized, and also more radicalized” than during the 2013 Gezi movement, according to Nicolas Bourcier, Istanbul correspondent for Le Monde. Uraz Aydin, leader of the Workers’ Party of Turkey (TIP), says,
The most important and surprising element is the mobilization of university students. Universities have been depoliticized for years, radical left movements are weak there, and their capacity for action is drastically reduced. So this generation of students, who probably grew up hearing about the Gezi uprising from their parents, has almost no experience in organizing and mobilizing.
Bourcier explains the strong youth presence as stemming from frustration with the AKP and Erdoğan: “Being 20 today means having known only Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.”
Indeed, although Erdoğan had declared that this presidential term would be his last, all signs point to him trying to stay in power, which would require a constitutional amendment approved by parliament to allow him to run again. To that end, Erdoğan is seeking a majority, as shown by negotiations launched with the PKK through the pro-Kurdish parliamentary party DEM, which holds 57 seats. This way, Erdoğan could trigger early presidential elections in 2026.
But the protests sparked by Imamoğlu’s arrest are reviving the specter of political and economic crisis, coming after Erdoğan’s worst electoral defeat in years during the municipal elections last March. His party was overtaken by the CHP and became only the country’s second-largest political force. Now financial markets are panicking, and last week the Istanbul Stock Exchange index dropped 16.5 percent. Given the gravity of the situation, Turkish economy minister Mehmet Simsek even had to deny rumors of his resignation: “We are at work and will continue taking all necessary steps to ensure proper market functioning. Please don’t believe fake news.”
To Oust Erdoğan, Fight Independently of the CHP
In this context, the violent repression of the movement reveals Erdoğan’s and the regime’s inability to contain dissent peacefully or to calm the situation. At the same time, it shows there is space to oust Erdoğan and his party. But to do so, the mobilizations must grow independently from Imamoğlu’s party, the CHP, which is leading the movement. Bourcier explains, “Compared to Gezi, the major difference is that today a political party, the country’s largest since 2024, is at the heart of the movement with its structure, elected officials, and spokespersons.”
Heir to the nationalist movement founded by Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, the “father” of the Turkish Republic and dictator from 1923 until his death in 1938, the CHP is a bourgeois and nationalist current often wrongly portrayed as “social democratic” in the press. While the Kemalist party has taken a progressive stance against Erdoğan’s authoritarian and reactionary policies — criticizing, for example, his patriarchal views and defending press freedom — the CHP’s presidential candidate in 2023, Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu, also promised to deport “all Syrian refugees,” or around 5 million people, during his campaign, fueling the wave of xenophobia sweeping through Turkey’s working classes. For the elections, the party formed an alliance with five opposition parties, including minor formations of Islamist Ahmet Davutoğlu, former prime minister under Erdoğan, and neoliberal Ali Babacan, Erdoğan’s former economy minister. The common denominator of this so-called Nation Alliance is, beyond opposition to Erdoğan, Turkish nationalism and the defense of capital’s interests.
There is nothing to expect from the CHP, which equally defends the interests of the Turkish bourgeoisie and offers no real alternative for the country’s working classes. In the face of Erdoğan’s authoritarianism, workers and youth must organize from below, without relying on institutions or political parties. As mass mobilizations have also erupted in Greece and in Serbia, the revolts in Turkey make clear that this is not a matter of regime — but of system.
Originally published in French on March 24 in Revolution Permanente.