CHP Istanbul Chairwoman Canan Kaftancıoğlu has been arrested at the Istanbul Courthouse and transferred to the newly opened women's prison in Silivri. According to her legal counsel, the prominent opposition politician is to be released under supervision.

The prison sentence against the CHP politician of almost five years was confirmed by the Court of Appeal in mid-May. The sentence is accompanied by a ban on politics for five years. Kaftancıoğlu had been sentenced to nearly ten years in prison in 2019 on a number of charges. Among other things, she is alleged to have spread "terror propaganda" and insulted President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. The charges related primarily to entries on Twitter between 2012 and 2017. Among other things, the now 50-year-old had criticized the death of 14-year-old Berkin Elvan by a tear gas grenade during the anti-government Gezi protests in 2013.

In particular, because of a Twitter message that Kaftancıoğlu was accused of posting, she has also been regularly pilloried by Erdoğan's AKP party and the pro-government press. When Kurdish women revolutionaries Sakine Cansız, Fidan Doğan and Leyla Şaylemez were executed by a contract killer from the Turkish intelligence agency MIT in Paris on Jan. 9, 2013, Kaftancıoğlu wrote: "Sakine Cansız once said: 'The history of humanity begins with women. Humanity is the loser in the face of what is done to women.' And again, humanity has lost."

Who is Canan Kaftancıoğlu?

Canan Kaftancıoğlu has repeatedly expressed public solidarity with social movements. The politician, who comes from Ordu on the Black Sea coast, was already active in the democracy movement as a medical student. After graduating in 1995, she first worked as a doctor in Sivas, and in 1997 she began training as a forensic physician at the medical faculty in Istanbul. As such, she made particular efforts to clarify torture cases in Turkey. Since 2011, Kaftancıoğlu has taken on various tasks at the CHP.

After the Gezi protests against a planned construction project on the grounds of Gezi Park in central Istanbul were crushed in the summer of 2013, Kaftancıoğlu joined the ‘United June Movement’. Since becoming involved in politics, she has also campaigned for Turkey to face up to its negative past. She was instrumental in founding the "Platform for Social Memory." When she supported the Armenia resolution of the German Parliament six years ago, she was slandered in Turkey as a "traitor to the fatherland."

Kaftancıoğlu is considered the architect of the CHP's surprising victory in the mayoral elections in Istanbul in March and June 2019. The election had to be repeated due to an objection by the ruling AKP, whereupon the CHP candidate Ekrem Imamoǧlu's share of the vote actually increased. After 25 years of rule by Erdogan's AKP and its predecessor parties, this election was considered Erdoğan's worst defeat to date.