ISTANBUL: Prosecutors in Turkiye announced dozens more arrests on Saturday as part of an ongoing corruption probe, denounced by opposition leaders as a pretext to remove resistance to an ambitious Istanbul canal project.

The Istanbul general prosecutor’s office said on Saturday it had issued warrants for 53 people, 47 of whom had been detained, over a corruption probe into opposition mayor Ekrem Imamoglu, who was himself arrested last month.

Imamoglu’s party, the main opposition CHP, said the arrests were to counter its efforts to block the proposed Istanbul canal project, intended to connect the Black Sea to the Sea of Marmara. The project is backed by President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

Speaking at a rally on Saturday, Ozgur Celik, head of the CHP in Istanbul, accused the government of having “revived” the project just after Imamoglu’s arrest.

The project proposes to connect Black Sea to Sea of Marmara

The deputy chairman of the CHP parliamentary group, Gokhan Gunaydin, also argued that “the real reason for these arrests is the Istanbul Canal”. But the government’s department for combating disinformation has denied the accusations.

“The operation follows the investigation opened on March 19 against the mayor for corruption,” it said. From his cell, Imamoglu also denounced the arrests, blaming “a handful of ambitious people... who started filling empty files with lies and slander”.

‘No coincidence’

Imamoglu was arrested for alleged corruption on the day he was named the CHP’s candidate for the 2028 presidential race. He is regarded as the most high-profile politician in opposition to Erdogan, whose AKP has ruled Turkiye since 2002.

Imamoglu’s detention sparked huge crowds rallying in nightly protests outside Istanbul City Hall. The demonstrations quickly spread across the country in what became Turkiye’s biggest wave of unrest since 2013.

Among those detained on Saturday was Imamoglu’s aide and brother-in-law Kadriye Kasapoglu and city hall officials, Turkish media reported.

The Bir Gun news site, which is close to the opposition, said raids were underway in the homes of those detained in Ankara, Istanbul and Tekirdag in the country’s north-west.

“Today’s operation is no coincidence,” Celik said on X. Istanbul’s Water and Sewage Authority had ordered the demolition and shutdown of construction sites along the canal route, he said.

The project was initiated by Erdogan in 2011 when he was prime minister. The plan is to relieve congestion in the Bosphorus Strait, a 50-kilometre-long, 150-metre-wide and 25-metre deep stretch.

Published in Dawn, April 27th, 2025