Millions stood in line
Erdoğan opponent İmamoğlu elected as presidential candidate
23.03.2025 – 8:59 p.m.Reading time: 1 min.
The Turkish opposition chose Ekrem Imamoğlu to the presidential candidate – despite his deposition and custody.
The Turkish opposition party Chp has elected Mayor Ekrem İmamoğlu to be the presidential candidate. Party leader Özgür Özel said to participants in a demonstration in Istanbul in the evening that 1.6 million of the 1.7 million CHP members for the 53-year-old voted as a candidate in a future presidential election.
According to Özel, millions of people also symbolically gave their voice on so -called solidarity choice boxes for İmamoğlu, which were placed in addition to the regular urns across the country. After counting a little more than half of the solidarity urns, there would already be more than 13 million symbolic voices for İmamoğlu, said Özel. Turkey has 85.6 million inhabitants.
İmamoğlu is considered a promising challenger of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. He was arrested on Wednesday in connection with corruption and terrorist investigations and now transferred to custody for the former. İmamoğlu denies all allegations and accuses the government of wanting to chill him out with the investigation as a political rival. The Ministry of the Interior recognized the mayor’s office because of the pre -trial detention on Sunday. It is still unclear whether a government -related trustee is being used for the politically significant metropolis of Istanbul.
