The head of the CHP party in Istanbul was sentenced to almost five years in prison for “insulting to the president”, a year before the elections scheduled for June 2023.
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prosecuted, condemned, threatened with ineligibility, the political opponents of the Turkish president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, find themselves in the viewfinder of justice about a year of the presidential election, scheduled for June 2023. Main opposition training, The People’s Republican Party (CHP) is particularly targeted.
canan Kaftancioglu, his representative for the city of Istanbul, was sentenced on appeal on Thursday, May 12, by the Supreme Court at four years and eleven months in prison for “insulting the president”, “insult to the service “and” insult to the Turkish state “.
The accusations against it were established on the basis of tweets published between 2012 and 2017. In one of them, the opponent criticized the lack of investigation into the death of Berkin Elvan, a boy of 14 years, fatally affected by a tear gas grenade during the antigan demonstrations of the GEZI movement in 2013.
tired of ineligibility
“We will breathe together when we restore the rule of law”, wrote the opponent on Twitter to the statement of the verdict. The mayor of Istanbul, Ekrem Imamoglu, denounced a “political decision”. “I am behind our president,” he tweeted on Thursday.
Listed for the moment, Canan Kaftancioglu is nevertheless struck with ineligibility, which penalizes the party on the eve of elections – presidential and legal legislative. Increasingly criticized for its poor economic governance (70 % inflation), the Islamo-conservative government fears the rise of opposition, united around a common project, namely the abolition of the absolutist presidential system set up by Mr. Erdogan.
Since the beginning of her legal setbacks, the opponent, aged 50 and a medical examiner by training, denounces a “political trial” aimed at punishing her for her role in the victory of the opposition to the municipal elections in Istanbul in 2019. The Islamo-conservatives of the Justice and Development Party (AKP), founded and led by Mr. Erdogan, never digested the loss of Istanbul to the municipal elections of spring 2019, won by Ekrem Imamoglu, the candidate of the candidate Chp.
Canan Kaftancioglu had played a decisive role in the victory of it. According to the progress, she was “the woman behind Imamoglu”. “Since then, the AKP hung me a target in the back,” she said to the world in 2021.
“Erdogan accentuates repression because he loses ground because of the rising economic crisis. The AKP tries to take revenge on having lost Istanbul by sending Canan Kaftancioglu in prison,” commented Thursday on Twitter Seren Selvin Korkmaz, from the Istanpol reflection group. The condemnation of this ally of Ekrem Imamoglu illustrates the will of the authorities to weaken the mayor, given by the polls as the politician most likely to dethrone President Erdogan in 2023.
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