Istanbul Mayor Ekrem Imamoğlu has been sentenced to two years and seven months in prison. If the sentence is confirmed by the highest court, the CHP politician will be deposed and will not be allowed to run for office again.
The mayor of Istanbul, Ekrem Imamoğlu, has been sentenced to two years, seven months and 15 days imprisonment for insulting members of the Turkish election committee. The CHP (Republican People's Party) politician also faces a ban on political activity.
The background to the proceedings is the municipal elections in Istanbul, which Imamoğlu won in March 2019 against the AKP candidate Binali Yildirim. The election result was annulled under pressure from the Turkish government and the election was repeated three months later. While Imamoğlu was ahead by just under 14,000 votes in the first election, he even had a lead of around 800,000 votes in June.
After the annulment of the first election, Imamoğlu criticised the process at a Council of Europe congress in Strasbourg. In response, Turkish Interior Minister Süleyman Soylu called him an idiot at a police event in Ankara. When a television journalist asked Imamoğlu on camera for a statement on the matter, he replied that the idiots were those who had annulled the ballot.
The verdict against Ekrem Imamoğlu is not yet final. If the Court of Cassation, as the highest instance, confirms the conviction, the CHP politician will be removed from his position as mayor and will no longer be allowed to run in any elections. Parliamentary and presidential elections will be held in Turkey in 2023.
