ISTANBUL: A Turkish court has issued another formal arrest order for Istanbul’s jailed mayor Ekrem Imamoglu on suspicion of “political espionage,” state-owned Anadolu news agency said on Monday, stepping up a long-running opposition crackdown.
Imamoglu, a key rival of President Tayyip Erdogan, who has been in jail since March pending trial on separate corruption charges, received a fresh jail sentence in July for insulting and threatening the chief Istanbul prosecutor.
Imamoglu denies all charges against him.
He denied the latest charge in court on Sunday and in a statement from prison on Friday.
“Such a slander, lie and conspiracy wouldn’t even cross the devil’s mind!” he said on X. “We are facing a shameful indecency that can’t be described with words.”
Anadolu said an Istanbul court issued the arrest order overnight for Imamoglu and two others, including Merdan Yanardag, editor-in-chief of television news channel Tele1.
The channel, which is critical of the government, was seized by the state on Friday, citing the espionage accusations.
The latest court ruling accuses Imamoglu of engaging in graft to raise funds for his presidential candidacy and espionage to secure international support, the agency said.
Hundreds of members and elected leaders of Imamoglu’s main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP) face an array of corruption-related charges in a crackdown the party calls politicized and anti-democratic.
The CHP denies graft accusations as a politicized attempt by the government to remove electoral threats against Erdogan, a charge the government rejects.
But the opposition got some respite from the pressure on Friday, after another court dismissed a bid to to oust the CHP’S leader and annul its 2023 congress.