Hundreds protest in north against Imamoglu arrest

Hundreds of people took to the streets in northern Nicosia on Friday evening to protest against the arrest of Istanbul mayor Ekrem Imamoglu.

The protest was organised by the Cyprus branch of the CHP, the Turkish political party to which Imamoglu belongs, and comes as protests have spread across Turkey and further afield after Imamoglu was arrested on Wednesday morning.

Turkey’s opposition insists that Imamoglu was arrested on trumped-up charges and that the arrest was politically motivated, with the CHP set to hold its presidential primary election this Sunday and Imamoglu the clear favourite to win and to stand against Erdogan in a presidential race which polling suggests Imamoglu would win.

The demonstration began in Kumsal Park, with a march then snaking down northern Nicosia’s arterial Dereboyu avenue and then into the capital’s old town, passing by Turkish Cypriot leader Ersin Tatar’s official residence before coming to a halt at the statue of the Republic of Turkey’s founding president Mustafa Kemal Ataturk at the Kyrenia Gate.

Along the route, protestors chanted slogans such as “don’t be silent! If you’re silent, you’ll be next”, “rights, law, justice”, “we are Mustafa Kemal’s soldiers”, “everywhere is Taksim”, referring to the 2013 Gezi Park protests, “Tayyip, resign!”, directed at Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, and “Erdogan doesn’t have a degree”.

The final chant makes reference to doubts over the validity of Erdogan’s bachelor’s degree from Istanbul’s Marmara University, which have once again come to the fore after Istanbul University revoked Imamoglu’s degree on Tuesday due to the fact that he had studied at an unrecognised university in northern Cyprus before transferring to Istanbul

Additionally, Friday’s protestors also sang songs, including Izmir Marsi, a song about the Turkish nationalist army’s entry into Izmir during the Turkish war of independence, and Guzel Gunler Gorecegiz, Turkish for “we will see beautiful days”, by Edip Akbayram.

When the protest reached the Kyrenia gate, the CHP’s Cyprus representative Mustafa Yurukcu made a speech.

“Today, I would like to thank everyone who has stood up for the future of our country, its youth, its children, and their youth, and I salute them … Law and democracy will win. Our country will win. We will achieve this together as citizens who believe in democracy and who have internalised democracy,” he said.

“We are here to defend Ekrem Imamoglu’s rights and to protect the voices of the millions who voted for him … It has become our duty to come together against unlawfulness. Defending democracy has become a common problem for everyone in our country.”

“Democracy and law are important and valuable for people, like air, water, and bread. Where there is no law, people become poor and suffocated,” he said.

He added, “we will protect our honourable, peaceful, and hopeful people in a secular way, because being without hope means losing”, before signing off with Imamoglu’s signature phrase, “everything will be great”.

After Yurukcu’s speech, protesters remained at the Kyrenia gate chanting and singing for almost half an hour, before singing a rendition of the Turkish national anthem and heading for the Turkish embassy.

There, they chanted the “student oath”, a pledge which was once read every morning at Turkish schools and still is read every day at public schools in the north, before dispersing at the police’s request.

The protest in Nicosia comes as protests in Turkey stretch into a third day, with the largest concentration of people seen at the Greater Istanbul municipality’s headquarters in the city’s Sarachane district.

There on Friday, CHP leader Ozgur Ozel spoke to the thousands who descended on Sarachane, telling them, “Erdogan’s regime of tyranny, oppression, and prohibition is shaking, and it is about to collapse!”

Erdogan had responded to the allegations put to him by the opposition and by protesters on Thursday night, saying Turkey’s opposition “never responds to the allegations brought forward by the judiciary”.

“Instead, they confine the matter to political slogans, resorting to the easy way of provoking their base and deceiving the public … We have no time to waste on the opposition’s theatrics,” he said.