The mayors of the southern cities of Antalya and Adana, as well as the southeastern Kurdish city of Adiyaman (Semsur) were arrested on charges of fixing tenders through bribing mayors and senior municipal executives, according to the state-owned Anadolu Agency.
“This morning, I was detained from my house in Ankara. I am being taken to Istanbul,” Adiyaman Mayor Abdurrahman Tutdere said on X.
Zeydan Karalar, mayor of Adana, vowed to “continue the struggle” after he was detained.
The arrests are part of a wider investigation into alleged graft within CHP-led administrations, according to Anadolu.
Ankara mayor and CHP strongman Mansur Yavas blasted the arrests as a targeted campaign against the party.
“In a system where the law is bent and twisted according to politics, where justice is applied for one segment and ignored for another, no one should expect us to trust the rule of law or believe in justice,” he said on X. “We will not bow to injustice, unlawfulness, and political operations.”
In Turkey’s 2024 municipal elections, Karalar received 46.7 percent of the vote, Tutdere scored 49.7 percent, and Antalya’s Muhittin Bocek took 71.4 percent.
The practice of dismissing elected officials has been ongoing for years. Dozens of mainly Kurdish mayors have been removed from their posts since 2016 and sentenced on terrorism-related charges for alleged ties to the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), which Ankara has designated a terrorist organization.
More recently, the AKP-led government has cracked down on CHP and other opposition mayors, detaining them largely on cases of alleged corruption.
On Thursday, a raid sparked by an alleged corruption case at the Izmir Metropolitan Municipality - a key CHP bastion - resulted in the arrests of 60 people, including former Izmir mayor Tunc Soyer and the head of CHP’s Izmir branch Senol Aslanoglu.
In March, Istanbul Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu was sacked from his position on charges of corruption. Considered the main rival of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan in the upcoming 2028 elections, his arrest sparked Turkey’s worst unrest in a decade, which in turn led to a massive crackdown on protests.
The dismissed mayors are replaced with state-appointed trustees.
