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00:00The jailed mayor of Istanbul, Ekrem İmamoğlu, faces a hearing today over accusations predating his arrest last month.
00:08İmamoğlu, who is expected to be the main rival of President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan in the next presidential elections,
00:15is accused in this case of insulting and threatening a public official in remarks criticizing the Istanbul prosecutor in recent months.
00:22He could face up to seven years and four months in prison if found guilty.
00:26Another district mayor faces charges of tender rigging.
00:30İmamoğlu was arrested three weeks ago on a string of charges ranging from corruption to support for a terrorist group,
00:36plunging Turkey into political crisis and sparking weeks of protests against Erdoğan's government.
00:42For more on this, I can bring in Yavuz Baydar, who is a blogger with the French news site Mediapar and a columnist with Svenska Dagbladet.
00:51Good morning, Yavuz, and thank you for joining us.
00:53This is Ekrem İmamoğlu's first hearing, albeit on separate charges for those he's detained for.
01:00Could this case alone be worrying enough for him?
01:05Yes, I think all these cases, there are two other major cases.
01:10This is sort of a minor case.
01:12This is the first hearing that we will be witnessing today.
01:15All of them are very serious because the fact is that all of these cases have a political nature rather than legal nature
01:26because thereby, by putting the mayor of Istanbul into jail, President Erdoğan intends to get out one of the most serious political contenders in the upcoming elections in three years.
01:46So, it should be seen as a very serious case.
01:51Now, the opposition CHP has accused the Turkish government of a coup against who they call the country's next president by arresting Yavuz Baydar.
01:59Is there any chance of the government actually losing its case in court?
02:03It's minimal, if any, of those possibilities.
02:12The judiciary for a long time is subservient, subordinated to the executive, political executive in Turkey.
02:20Separation of powers nearly collapsed totally for about eight years now since 2017.
02:27And Turkey changed the regime and sort of shifted into a one-man rule.
02:34And all these cases in Istanbul, including the protests after the arrest and detention of the mayor of Istanbul,
02:42have shown us that the judiciary, the machinery of judiciary is now in sync with the political executives.
02:52So, the chances are minimal for Ekrem Imamoglu and his supporters that there will be a kind of a release or any softening, if you will, of those cases.
03:06Now, if Imamoglu is ruled out for future elections, what options do the opposition have?
03:11That is the only tool or instrument that the main opposition has now is, as the chairman of the party has been vocal about,
03:28is to take its grassroots, particularly in Istanbul or in the western Anatolian cities like Izmir and Bodrum, Antalya, Bursa, etc.,
03:43to take to the streets, to the squares of those cities.
03:46And now, it seems that every week there will be at least one such big rally in one of those cities or one of those districts of Istanbul.
03:59And now, I think it's the public arenas, public areas that will be more vocal or visible about the protests.
04:09Other than that, the minority that main opposition has in parliament is insignificant in the context.
04:18And I think what we see is going to be a long, uphill battle for the main opposition.
04:27In addition to that, President Erdogan's drive, the political move,
04:34to drive a wedge between the other main opposition party, the pro-Kurdish Dem party seems to work quite successfully
04:43by offering a carrot to the pro-Kurdish party Dem in terms of improving the conditions of the jailed PKK leader,
04:52Abdullah Ejalan, seems to work, which makes the pro-Kurdish party Dem and its grassroots
05:00quite pacifist, if you will, in terms of joining in a united front with the main opposition secular CHP party.
05:10So, it's a complex situation right now.
05:13And there are two parallel processes that are going on, legal cases against Istanbul mayor
05:19and also squeezing the main opposition into a corner
05:23while offering some sort of opening for the pro-Kurdish Dem party.
05:30So, that is something that makes the entire processes in Turkey, the political stage,
05:37very complex and interesting to watch.
05:41And this is clearly not the first authoritarian move by Recep Tayyip Erdogan's government,
05:46but it's clearly an escalation given it targets such a high-profile opposition figure.
05:52What does it say about the direction Turkey is taking?
05:55It is definitely moving more and more towards one-man, strengthened and consolidated one-man rule,
06:05more purer form of autocracy, as voiced by many opposition figures in media and political segments as well.
06:15So, if Erdogan continues successfully to jail opponents and also deter the main dynamic of the street protests,
06:30which is the students, the youth, those who are born with Erdogan in power,
06:36if the deterrence of these protesters works well,
06:42there will have been another very critical threshold passed in terms of shifting to that ground.
06:51And so far, the strategy of Erdogan seems to work.
06:56Street protests and square protests are sort of fading.
07:01They are losing energy, as we have seen in many cases,
07:05like in Belarus or any other place or Venezuela.
07:08And this seems to be the pattern right now in Turkey.
07:12Thank you very much for that.
07:13Yavuz Baydar.