Turkish police have arrested more than 120 city hall members in the opposition bastion of Izmir, local media and the CHP opposition party said on Tuesday.
The arrests, on charges of alleged corruption, came after a similar operation in opposition-run Istanbul on March 19 that saw the arrest of its popular mayor, Ekrem Imamoglu, the main political rival of Turkey's President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
In Izmir, Turkey's third-largest city that the opposition has run for years, a former mayor and numerous "senior officials" were among those detained, Murat Bakan, the vice president of the opposition Republican People's Party (CHP) wrote on X.
In total, some 157 arrest warrants were issued in the operation, local media reported.
"We are faced with a process similar to that in Istanbul," Bakan wrote, adding that Tunc Soyer, a former mayor, and Senol Aslanoglu, the party's regional president, were among those detained.
"These dawn arrests were not a legal obligation, but a clear political choice," Bakan wrote, saying that many of those detained had already been under investigation.
"If they had been called to testify, they would have done so," he said.
With AFP
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