Turkey Launches Probe into Istanbul Mayor for ‘Disrespecting’ Ottoman Sultan

The Turkish Interior Ministry announced on Tuesday that it had opened an investigation into Istanbul Mayor Ekrem İmamoğlu for allegedly disrespecting an Ottoman sultan’s tomb, Turkish news outlet Ahval reported.

The city’s mayor visited the mausoleum of Sultan Mehmed II last year as part of the commemoration festivities for the 567th anniversary of the Turkish conquest of Constantinople, the outlet noted. Mehmed II was Sultan of the Ottoman Empire from 1444-1446 and again from 1451-1481. His most significant accomplishment was the conquest of Constantinople in 1453, the only successful siege of the city since its foundation more than 1,000 years prior. Thereafter, he was known as Mehmed the Conqueror.

İmamoğlu’s alleged disrespect consisted of walking around the monument with his hands held behind his back. Turkish outlet Cumhuriyet, one of the last publications in Turkey not completely under the thumb of Erdogan’s regime, detailed the ministry’s request to the mayor asking him to address the “allegation that you were disrespectful by walking around the tomb of Fatih Sultan Mehmet, with your hands tied behind you, as part of a program held in 2020.”

İmamoğlu, a member of Turkey’s secularist Republican People’s Party (CHP), secured the mayoral office of Turkey’s largest city in 2019, after defeating former Turkish Prime Minister Binali Yildirim of the Islamist Justice and Development Party (AKP). The victory marked a significant defeat for President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, himself of the AKP, who then ordered a new election, claiming “organized crime” had affected the results. İmamoğlu again won the mayoral post in June, that time by an even larger margin. Ahval noted that İmamoğlu’s ascension ended over two decades of AKP rule in the city and has positioned him to launch a challenge to Erdogan in 2023.

A statement from Interior Ministry spokesman Mahir Çataklı elaborated on the allegations, noting İmamoğlu’s posture at the memorial was not the sole rationale for the investigation. The statement highlighted the Istanbul mayor’s contact with and alleged praise for the People’s Democratic Party (HDP), a Kurdish-friendly left-wing party that Erdogan has all but outlawed.

“This is an action by the Istanbul Chief Public Prosecutor’s Office regarding İmamoğlu,” Çataklı said. “The Istanbul Chief Public Prosecutor’s Office made a request, where Mr. İmamoğlu visited the mayors of HDP and praised the criminals, he again visited the mayors and the aforementioned party, during a visit to Fatih sultan Mehmet.”

The Turkish government, in March of this year, made moves to formally dissolve the HDP, which had already been under intense scrutiny for the crime of being a prominent opposition party. After the botched 2016 coup against the Erodgan regime, the HDP suffered mass arrests over their alleged involvement in the effort. The March effort, however, came amid allegations that the HDP was essentially a front for the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) a Marxist, separatist group and U.S.-designated terrorist organization.

The Interior Ministry did not detail İmamoğlu’s alleged praise for a rival opposition party. However, Turkish news outlet Sözcü corroborated the government account of İmamoğlu’s posture at the mausoleum, publishing video of the mayor walking with his arms behind his back while outside the building. The mayor does not speak during the footage about the HDP, PKK, or any political matter.

The Turkish regime often uses insults to historical figures as a pretense for political arrests. Insulting Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, the founder of the modern Turkish state, for example, carries a maximum sentence of three years in prison. Erdogan, for his part, has repeatedly violated this statute while claiming to uphold his legacy. In 2018, the Turkish president blasted his nation’s founder for his reforms to the Turkish language, saying he “destroyed” it.

Erdogan has also made concrete steps to reverse many of Atatürk’s policies, in particular the trend toward secular governance. In 2020, Erodgan’s government restored the Hagia Sophia in Istanbul to an operating mosque. The building was originally a Roman cathedral before Mehmed II’s conquest of the city paved the way for its conversion to a mosque before becoming a secular museum in 1935.