Turkey braced for a third day of protests on Friday as anger spread across the country over the arrest of Istanbul's popular Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu in a graft and terror probe.
Imamoglu, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan's main political rival, was arrested at dawn on Wednesday, just days before he was due to be named the candidate for the main opposition CHP party in the 2028 presidential election.
His party has denounced the detention as a "coup" and vowed to keep up the demonstrations, which by Thursday night had spread to at least 32 of Turkey's 81 provinces, according to an AFP count.
Opposition leader Ozgur Ozel urged people across Turkey to hit the streets at 1730 GMT, despite warnings from the justice minister that such calls were "unlawful and unacceptable".
On Friday afternoon, Istanbul's governor ordered the closure of Galata Bridge and Ataturk Bridge, which cross the Golden Horn estuary and are the main access routes to the historic peninsula where City Hall is located.
Thousands have defied a protest ban in Istanbul, gathering nightly outside City Hall in support of the mayor, with the authorities on Friday extending the ban to the capital Ankara and the western coastal city of Izmir.
Police initially showed restraint in handling the protests, but on Thursday they fired rubber bullets and teargas as they scuffled with students in Istanbul, AFP correspondents said.
In Ankara, riot police used pepper gas, rubber bullets, and water cannons to disperse around 1,500 people, another correspondent said.
Police have arrested at least 88 protesters, Turkish media said, updating an earlier figure of 53 from Interior Minister Ali Yerlikaya, who also said 16 police officers had been hurt.
He also said police had detained another 54 people for online posts deemed "incitement to hatred".
'Opposition drama'
Late Thursday, Erdogan shrugged off the unrest -- Turkey's worst street protests in years.
"The opposition's efforts to present its problems with the law as the country's biggest problem are the height of hypocrisy," he said.
Turkey, he said, "has no time to waste on the opposition's dramas".
But Ozel on Thursday warned Erdogan the protests would continue.
"From now on, no one should expect CHP to do politics in halls or buildings; we'll be on the streets and in the squares," he said.
The pro-Kurdish opposition DEM party also said it would join Friday's Istanbul rally.
Writing on X, Justice Minister Yilmaz Tunc on Friday warned that calling for street protests was "unlawful and unacceptable. Those in positions of responsibility should show more caution".
Officials said Imamoglu and six others were under investigation for "aiding a terrorist organization"—namely "the banned Kurdish PKK militant group—and were also under scrutiny in a graft probe involving about 100 other suspects.
Investigators reportedly began questioning Imamoglu on Friday afternoon, local media reported, saying all of the suspects were due in court on Sunday morning.
Primary
Despite Imamoglu's detention, the CHP vowed it would press ahead with its primary on Sunday, at which it would formally nominate him as its candidate for the 2028 race.
The party said it would open the process to anyone who wanted to vote, not just party members, saying, "Come to the ballot box and say 'no' to the coup attempt!"
Observers said the government could seek to block the primary to prevent a further show of support for Imamgolu.
"If a large number of people show up and vote for Imamoglu, it will further legitimize him domestically," Gonul Tol, head of the Turkish studies program at the Washington-based Middle East Institute, told AFP.
"It could really move things in a direction that Erdogan doesn't want."
By Friday morning, the restrictions on social media and internet access that had been in place since Imamoglu's arrest were lifted, internet access monitor EngelliWeb said.
The move against Imamoglu has dealt a heavy blow to the Turkish lira, and on Friday the BIST 100 stock exchange was trading lower, shedding 6.63 percent shortly after 1200 GMT.
With AFP
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