Further arrest warrants issued in Turkey's crackdown on Istanbul municipality

Istanbul's municipality faces further crackdown as 22 arrest warrants are issued, following Mayor Ekrem İmamoğlu's arrest and mass protests against alleged corruption charges.

Turkish authorities have issued arrest warrants for 22 people on Tuesday as part of a deepening crackdown against the Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality (IBB).The development comes two months after Ekrem İmamoğlu, the city's mayor and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan's biggest political rival, was arrested pending trial for alleged corruption.Shortly after his arrest along with around 100 others, Turkish police detained more than 50 people in late April on suspicion of charges including bribery and "establishing, managing and being a member of an organisation with the aim of committing a crime".Some of those arrested in April were IBB employees, including the municipality's Bosphorus Zoning Manager Elçin Karaoğlu.In the latest wave of the legal crackdown, arrest warrants were issued on Tuesday morning for 22 people. IBB Press, Publications and Public Relations Department Head Taner Çetin was among them.The opposition Republican People's Party (CHP), to which İmamoğlu belongs, hit out at the development.CHP Deputy Chairman Ali Mahir Başarır said the authorities were targeting heads of departments at the IBB and sending them to prison as part of a broader strategy."There is a system whose sole aim is to prevent the Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality from working," he said.Erdoğan has implied that further evidence will surface in the ongoing investigation, saying, "This is the reason for their panic."İmamoğlu has denied any wrongdoing and has called on the Turkish public to fight against "those rotting our state".What happened in March?İmamoğlu was detained on 18 March and was formally arrested on 23 March.The whole process came shortly before he was due to be nominated as the CHP's presidential candidate.İmamoğlu was announced as the CHP's presidential candidate with nearly 15 million party votes on the same day as his arrest. He was then suspended from his post as mayor by the Ministry of Interior.Afterwards, Nuri Aslan, a CHP member of the municipal council, was elected as the acting deputy mayor of Istanbul instead of İmamoğlu.The mass protests triggered by İmamoğlu's arrest turned into the largest demonstrations in several major cities across the country, including Istanbul, in more than a decade.Police responded to the protests with pepper spray, tear gas and water cannons.