The arrest of Istanbul Mayor Ekrem İmamoğlu highlights Türkiye’s escalating political repression, where opposition figures are increasingly targeted under sweeping criminal and terrorism charges. While the ruling and opposition parties battle for control, both continue to marginalise the Kurdish population, revealing a deeper struggle for power rather than genuine democratic reform.  

The political climate in Türkiye is reaching a boiling point with the jailing of Ekrem İmamoğlu, the mayor of Istanbul and a key challenger to President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. İmamoğlu, a prominent figure in the opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), has been widely seen as a serious contender for the presidency. His arrest marks yet another episode in Türkiye’s relentless struggle for power.

İmamoğlu has been charged with “establishing and leading a criminal organisation, accepting bribes, misconduct in office, unlawfully recording personal data and bid rigging.” Prosecutors have even sought to charge him with “aiding an armed terrorist organisation,” a reference to the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), which has been engaged in a decades-long conflict with the Turkish state over its policies of oppression against the Kurds. While the court ruled that this particular charge was “not deemed necessary at this stage,” the broader strategy is clear: in Türkiye, anyone who challenges the ruling system can easily be accused of terrorism to be sidelined from power.

What makes İmamoğlu’s case particularly striking is the historical irony of his party, the CHP. Since the founding of modern Türkiye in 1923 by Mustefa Kemal (Atatürk), it was the CHP that institutionalised the denial of Kurdistan and suppression of Kurdish identity—a policy that has been carried forward by every ruling party since. Today, the very tools of repression once used against the Kurds are now being turned against the Kemalists themselves, exposing the cyclical nature of Türkiye’s political repression.

Türkiye is classified as a brown country—a state with both democratic and authoritarian features—but democracy, legality, and citizenship rights effectively disappear in southeastern Türkiye, known as Northern Kurdistan. Since the 1920s, successive governments have maintained a state of emergency under different guises, all of which have been used to systematically suppress Kurdish rights.

Erdoğan and his ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP)—backed by the ultranationalist Nationalist Movement Party (MHP)—are pursuing a dual strategy: systematically eliminating political rivals while continuing Türkiye’s longstanding policy of denying Kurdish rights. This is evident in their approach to Abdullah Öcalan, the imprisoned PKK leader, and his call for disarmament, which they manipulate to serve their own agenda.

One of Erdoğan’s latest moves is his attempt to co-opt the Kurdish Newroz (New Year)—a significant cultural and political event for Kurds. He plans to propose that Newroz be celebrated collectively by the “Turkic world” under the auspices of the “Organization of Turkic States” in May 2025. This is a calculated attempt to erase Kurdish identity from a festival that was once banned by the Turkish state until 1992, resulting in the loss of many lives, and still leading to the ongoing detention and imprisonment of those who celebrate it.

A day after Erdoğan’s speech on 21 March 2025, this erasure became evident in the Kurdistani city of Urmîyeh (Urmia) in western Iran, where Kurds form the majority. Emboldened by Turkish and Azerbaijani-backed Azeri pan-nationalist mobs—with implicit support from the Iranian regime—they gathered in Urmîyeh after a mass Kurdish Newroz celebration (marking the year 2725), calling for massacres against the Kurds and continuing their campaign of Kurdish denial. To Erdoğan, Türkiye’s “spiritual geography” spans “from Syria to Gaza, from Aleppo to Tabriz [in Iran], from Mosul to Jerusalem.”

As protests erupted in Türkiye against İmamoğlu’s arrest, demonstrators chant “rights, law, justice.” But these same voices remain silent when it comes to the rights of Kurds, who continue to suffer under the very system their political fathers—Atatürk and the CHP—created. This selective outrage exposes a deeper truth: Türkiye’s political battle is not about justice but about control.

İmamoğlu is still awaiting trial, but history suggests that today’s persecutors could become tomorrow’s victims. The Kemalists who once labelled Kurds as “terrorists” now face similar accusations themselves, as Turkish power struggles turn inward. What is unfolding is not a fight for democracy but a conflict among Turks to dominate the state apparatus.

Despite their internal rivalry, both the CHP and AKP—along with their Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) ally—share one common reality: they need the Kurdish vote to win the next general election in 2028 and cement their grip on power. This places the Kurds and the pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Equality and Democracy Party (DEM) in a precarious position, as both factions seek to manipulate Kurdish political aspirations for their own gain. This exposes the so-called “peace” initiative they launched in October 2024 as insincere from the start. Neither the Kemalists nor Erdoğan’s Islamists-nationalists offer true change for the Kurds. In this high-stakes power struggle, the Kurds must be vigilant against being used as mere pawns in Türkiye’s internal conflicts.

Dr Loqman Radpey, an expert on Kurdistan and the Middle East, is a fellow at the Middle East Forum with over a decade of experience analyzing the legal and political dimensions of conflicts in the Middle East, including Kurdistani regions in Iran, Iraq, Turkey, Syria, and the Soviet Union. He is the author of ‘Towards an Independent Kurdistan: Self-Determination in International Law’ (published by Routledge in 2023), the first comprehensive historico-legal account of Kurdish aspirations for statehood. His upcoming work, “Self-Determination during the Cold War”, will appear in ‘The Cambridge History of International Law’ (Volume XI).

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