The Turkish judiciary today ordered five mayors of the social democratic Republican People’s Party (CHP), the main opposition formation, to be jailed, three of whom are heads of Constantinople‘s municipal wards, a CHP spokesman told the French News Agency.

Seventeen other people who were also arrested over the weekend, including deputy mayors of Constantinople’s municipal wards, were also placed under temporary detention for “corruption.”

In addition to Constantinople mayor Ekrem Imamoglu, who has been in jail since late March, eight Constantinople ward mayors belonging to the CHP have been arrested and detained since late October.

Observers say the government is attempting to weaken the CHP, which had emerged victorious in the spring 2024 local elections against President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s Islamist-conservative Justice and Development Party (AKP).

The CHP, which had managed to hold Constantinople, Ankara and Izmir, Turkey’s three largest cities, in those elections, had also increased its strength in more conservative provinces and won 26 of the 39 municipalities in Constantinople, Turkey’s economic capital.

The March 19 arrest of Ekrem Imamoglu, considered President Erdogan’s most prominent rival, had caused a major wave of controversy in the country.