“What was done to President Tayyip Erdoğan and to me in the past should not be done to Ekrem İmamoğlu either … We must not lose the rule of law and justice. Otherwise, Türkiye will lose,” Gül said.
In 1998, Erdoğan was convicted for inciting religious hatred and banned from politics after reciting a poem when he was mayor of Istanbul.
What happens now?
The Turkish constitution limits presidents to two terms and Erdoğan’s current term ends in 2028. If parliament calls for early elections, Erdoğan, 71, could legally run again before finishing his second term.
Several observers reckon Erdoğan’s gambit is to go for early elections without running against İmamoğlu, as the 54-year-old is seen by many as the only unifying candidate who could beat him in the presidential elections. (While Erdoğan has said he won’t fight any more elections, he has a track record of pretending to step back from politics and his words are not taken seriously by most Turks.)
İmamoğlu has won three fiercely fought contests to run Turkey’s biggest city — and, significantly, the CHP last year managed to flip several traditional districts of Istanbul that Erdoğan viewed as reliable bastions for his Islamist AK Party.
Erdoğan’s government says the investigations are not politically motivated but the whole crisis is caused by the “corruption within the CHP.”
