Turkiye jails Istanbul mayor for 'insulting public servants'

Istanbul Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu in Istanbul, Turkey [Nevzat Yıldırım/Anadolu Agency]

A Turkish court yesterday sentenced the Mayor of Istanbul, Ekrem Imamoglu, to two years, seven months and 15 days in prison and banned him from politics on a charge of “insulting” members of the Supreme Election Council.

Imamoglu’s lawyer, Kamal Bolat, attended the session at the Istanbul Anadolu Seventh Criminal Court of First Instance, along with many members of the Republican People’s Party (CHP) and the opposition IYI Party.

The court announced its decision against Imamoglu for “publicly insulting public servants … for carrying out their duties.” At the time, Saadi Guven was the head of the Supreme Elections Committee.

The court invoked Article 53 of the Turkish Criminal law, imposing a political ban on Imamoglu.

READ: Turkiye slams EU criticism of its trade ties with Russia

Unless otherwise stated in the article above, this work by Middle East Monitor is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. If the image(s) bear our credit, this license also applies to them. What does that mean? For other permissions, please contact us.