PARIS: The French capital on Tuesday made Istanbul’s jailed mayor a citizen of honor, with the city’s top official throwing her support behind the Turkish opposition figure.
Mass protests have erupted in Turkiye after the March 19 arrest of Ekrem Imamoglu, a main rival to President Recip Tayyip Erdogan, on corruption charges his supporters say are false.
Widely seen as the only politician capable of challenging Erdogan at the ballot box, Imamoglu was elected as the opposition CHP party’s candidate for the 2028 election on the day he was jailed.
“Imamoglu is today unfairly prevented from representing his party and carrying the voice of millions of Turkish people,” Paris mayor Anne Hidalgo told the city council after it voted to make him a citizen of honor.
“Deprived of his freedom and his basic rights, he should be able to count on the full support of Paris,” said the Socialist, describing the French city as “the capital of human rights.”
This show of support “will perhaps allow the current Turkish authorities to hear the voices of democratic reason,” she added.
Hidalgo was among several European mayors who called for Imamoglu’s release last month.
Paris makes jailed Erdogan rival honorary citizen
https://arab.news/mu2ef
Paris makes jailed Erdogan rival honorary citizen
- Mass protests have erupted in Turkiye after the March 19 arrest of Ekrem Imamoglu
- He is widely seen as the only politician capable of challenging Erdogan at the ballot box
Syria Kurds chief says ‘all efforts’ being made to salvage deal with Damascus
- Abdi said the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), the Kurds’ de facto army, remained committed to the deal
- The two sides were working toward “mutual understanding” on military integration and counter-terrorism
DAMASCUS: Syrian Kurdish leader Mazloum Abdi said Thursday that “all efforts” were being made to prevent the collapse of talks on an agreement with Damascus to integrate his forces into the central government.
The remarks came days after Aleppo saw deadly clashes between the two sides before their respective leaders ordered a ceasefire.
In March, Abdi signed a deal with Syrian President Ahmed Al-Sharaa to merge the Kurds’ semi-autonomous administration into the government by year’s end, but differences have held up its implementation.
Abdi said the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), the Kurds’ de facto army, remained committed to the deal, adding in a statement that the two sides were working toward “mutual understanding” on military integration and counter-terrorism, and pledging further meetings with Damascus.
Downplaying the year-end deadline, he said the deal “did not specify a time limit for its ending or for the return to military solutions.”
He added that “all efforts are being made to prevent the collapse of this process” and that he considered failure unlikely.
Abdi also repeated the SDF’s demand for decentralization, which has been rejected by Syria’s Islamist authorities, who took power after ousting longtime ruler Bashar Assad last year.
Turkiye, an important ally of Syria’s new leaders, sees the presence of Kurdish forces on its border as a security threat.
In Damascus this week, Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan stressed the importance of the Kurds’ integration, having warned the week before that patience with the SDF “is running out.”
The SDF control large swathes of the country’s oil-rich north and northeast, and with the support of a US-led international coalition, were integral to the territorial defeat of the Daesh group in Syria in 2019.
Syria last month joined the anti-IS coalition and has announced operations against the jihadist group in recent days.
