Of Athena Papakosta

The following days in Turkey It is unknown what they will bring. The click in the country has long been linked around Imamoglou.

Six years ago, in his first attempt to escape his political hunt for the first time politically taken ErdoganEkrem Imamoglu had stood in one scene.

Addressing his concentrated supporters, he pulled out his jacket, lifted his sleeves from his shirt and relaxing his tie knot, had invited everyone to help him to win the Turkish president once again.

Yesterday, shortly before he was taken to the Istanbul Security Directorate, the mayor of it posted a video. This time, saying again ready to fight, he happened to tie his tie, declaring determined to stand up again against his opponent, the President of Turkey. Whether this time he will be able to appear.

The time of a heralded arrest

Constantinople’s mayor and Turkish President’s main opponent, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, was arrested early in his home early in the morning after a huge operation of the authorities and just a few days before he officially announced his 20 -year nominee.

Ekrem Imamoglu is confronted with charges of corruption and economic relations with the PKK, which Turkey considers a terrorist organization, as well as charges of a criminal organization, bribery and competition manipulation.

One day earlier, on Tuesday, the University of Constantinople, from which the mayor of Constantinople graduated, canceled his degree with the category of forgery of official documents, automatically out of the presidential race, as a presidential race,

“We are facing great tyranny, but I want you to know that I will not be discouraged,” he emphasized in a video a few minutes before his arrest.

For a long time, critics of the Turkish president, who became prime minister of Turkey in 2003 and president for the first time in 2014, accusing him of exploiting and using the country’s institutions to patiently patient opponents and get them out of the middle.

As they point out, the Turkish government has been preparing the ground for a long time so that Imamoglou could put in place for the country’s president, because it is the biggest threat to Erdogan and his future at the helm of Turkey.

Turkey has scheduled presidential elections in 2028. But there are a few who will push to set up early ballot boxes. The reason is not inflation, which has been crushing the nerves of the Turkish economy for years, but the golden opportunity given to the Turkish president so that he can claim another term.

Turkey’s Constitution does not allow a third presidential term. However, if, for example, the Turkish parliament is calling for early elections, Recep Tayyip Erdogan – who is not a candidate at the moment, neither he nor anyone else from his ruling party, he will be able to re -nominate him, with the pretext of not making him a pretext.

However, one will reasonably say, “But this is not his second presidential term”. And it is not. However, it is considered second.

Recep Tayyip Erdogan may be elected for the first time in the presidential post 11 years ago and re -elected to it in 2018, but after constitutional modifications that made the government to the neighboring presidential, he was able to re -be a candidate in 2023, when he was re -elected.

What “unites” them is what they … separate them

Erem Imamoglu is not an unknown person for the “Sultan” Erdogan, as international media – and not only – they have baptized him. The Turkish president has been watching him for years. After all, he is his only political opponent, who has managed against him not one, not two but three powerful political blows and all under the middle, thus questioning the political omnipotence Erdogan in his neighbor.

The two share a lot in common, but at the same time they divide much more.

Ekrem Imamoglu is a member of the opposition Social Democratic Republican People’s Party (CHP), while Recep Tayyip Erdogan leads the ruling Islamic Party of Justice and Development (AKP).

Football fan, like Erdogan himself, Imamoglu has also been in the youth of the amateur footballer. He was born in Trabzon and in his 43rd years he turned to politics. He was elected for the first time mayor in Bayildouzu in 2014 and five years later, in 2019, he claimed the municipality of Constantinople and won him over. This was the first blow – a surprise to the pride of the Turkish president.

Born, a native of Constantinople, Erdogan, who began his political career from the city serving as a mayor in 1994, demanded a re -counting and lost … again.

His third and most pharmacist defeat, in his about 20 years of power in the country, was a year ago, again by Ekrem Imoglou, when AKP’s candidate Murat Kurum and his opponent crashed into the polls.

The devil hides in the details

Many, commenting on the triumph of Imamoglou in Turkey’s largest city and economic center, Constantinople last spring, said that the pre -election period for the 2028 presidential in the country was raised at that time, and almost a year after the Turkish president, the Turkish president showed him a decision.

Ekrem Imamoglu remains in custody and faced with a heavy indictment.

On the streets, however, the reaction of its supporters is massive – despite the ban on demonstrations and despite the restrictions imposed on users on social media.

For many, Imoglou is already a hero, as was the case with Erdogan himself, when he was also imprisoned by the deep Kemalist state in the late 1990s and the first new defeat of the Turkish president could be at the forefront, as he seems to be in danger.