The political climate in Turkey is reaching a boiling point with the jailing of Ekrem Imamoglu, the mayor of Istanbul and a key challenger to President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
Imamoglu, a prominent figure in the opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), has been widely seen as a serious contender for the presidency. His arrest marks yet another episode in Turkey’s relentless power struggle.
Istanbul’s mayor has been charged with “establishing and leading a criminal organization, accepting bribes, misconduct in office, unlawfully recording personal data, and bid rigging.”
Prosecutors have even sought to charge him with “aiding an armed terrorist organization,” a reference to the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), which has been engaged in a decades-long conflict with the Turkish state over its oppression against the Kurds. While the court ruled that this particular charge was “not deemed necessary at this stage,” the broader strategy is clear: In Turkey, anyone who challenges the ruling system can easily be accused of terrorism to be sidelined from power.
What makes İmamoglu’s case particularly striking is the historical irony of his party, the CHP. Since the founding of modern Turkey in 1923 by Mustefa Kemal (Ataturk), it was the CHP that institutionalized the denial of Kurdistan and suppression of Kurdish identity – a policy that has been carried forward by every ruling party since.
Today, the very tools of repression once used against the Kurds are now being turned against the Kemalists themselves, exposing the cyclical nature of Turkey’s political repression.
Turkey's image to the world
Turkey is classified as a “brown country” with both democratic and authoritarian features, but democracy, legality, and citizenship rights effectively disappear in southeastern Turkey, known as Northern Kurdistan. Since the 1920s, successive governments have maintained a state of emergency under different guises, all of which have been used to systematically suppress Kurdish rights.
Erdogan and his ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) – backed by the ultranationalist Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) – are pursuing a dual strategy: systematically eliminating political rivals while continuing Turkey’s longstanding policy of denying Kurdish rights. This is evident in their approach to Abdullah Ocalan, the imprisoned PKK leader, and his call for disarmament, which they manipulate to serve their own agenda.
One of Erdogan’s latest moves is his attempt to co-opt the Kurdish Newroz (new year) – a significant cultural and political event for Kurds. He plans to propose that Newroz be celebrated collectively by the “Turkic world” under the auspices of the “Organization of Turkic States” in May 2025. This is a calculated attempt to erase Kurdish identity from a festival that was banned by the Turkish state until 1992, resulting in the loss of many lives, and still leading to the ongoing detention and imprisonment of those who celebrate it.
A day after Erdogan’s speech on March 21, 2025, this erasure mindset became evident in the Kurdistani city of Urmia in western Iran, where Kurds form the majority.
Emboldened by Turkish and Azerbaijani-backed Azeri pan-nationalist mobs – with implicit support from the Iranian regime – they gathered in Urmia after a mass Kurdish Newroz celebration (marking the year 2725), calling for massacres against the Kurds and continuing their campaign of Kurdish denial.
To Erdogan, Turkey’s “spiritual geography” spans “from Syria to Gaza, from Aleppo to Tabriz [in Iran], from Mosul to Jerusalem.”
Protests have erupted in Turkey against Imamoglu’s arrest, with demonstrators chanting: “Rights, law, justice.” But these same voices remain silent when it comes to the rights of Kurds, who continue to suffer under the very system that their political fathers – Atatürk and the CHP – created. This selective outrage exposes a deeper truth: Turkey’s political battle is about control, not justice.
Imamoglu is still awaiting trial, but history suggests that today’s persecutors could become tomorrow’s victims. The Kemalists who once labeled Kurds as “terrorists” now face similar accusations themselves, as Turkish power struggles turn inward. What is unfolding is not a fight for democracy but a conflict among Turks to dominate the state apparatus.
Despite their internal rivalry, both the CHP and AKP – along with their Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) ally – share one common reality: They need the Kurdish vote to win the next general election in 2028 and cement their grip on power. This places the Kurds and the pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Equality and Democracy Party (DEM) in a precarious position, as both factions seek to manipulate Kurdish political aspirations for their own gain. This exposes the so-called “peace” initiative they launched in October 2024 as insincere from the start. Neither the Kemalists nor Erdogan’s Islamist-nationalists offer true change for the Kurds.
In this high-stakes power struggle, the Kurds must be vigilant against being used as mere pawns in Turkey’s internal conflicts.
The writer, an expert on Kurdistan and the Middle East, is a fellow at the Middle East Forum and author of Towards an Independent Kurdistan: Self-Determination in International Law (Routledge 2023). Follow him on X @LoqmanRadpey.
