About a quarter of a century ago, a prominent mayor of Istanbul was ousted from office and imprisoned on charges his supporters dismissed as politically motivated, before later returning to become the longest-serving leader in his country's modern history.
He was Recep Tayyip Erdogan, today's president of Turkey.
But now Erdogan is facing a political crisis that could be the most severe during his increasingly authoritarian rule, which has lasted more than two decades, A2 reports.
And, in a significant symmetry, it was the arrest of another prominent and critical mayor of Istanbul that precipitated this crisis.
For more than a week, protests have erupted in Istanbul, Ankara and other cities and provinces across the country, following the March 19 detention of Istanbul Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu on charges of corruption and supporting a terrorist group.
The unrest is the largest and most widespread to sweep the country since the Gezi Park protests, which dominated global headlines for weeks in 2013, accelerating what rights groups say is a slide toward authoritarianism under Erdogan.
While no casualties have been reported in the current demonstrations, nearly 1,500 people have been arrested - some of them for insulting Erdogan and his family - while several journalists have been jailed and a BBC reporter has been expelled from the country after being reported to be a "threat to public order", according to the British broadcaster.
But the main reason why analysts believe this crisis could mark an even more important moment for Erdogan and Turkey's democracy is the changed economic and political environment.
“At that time, Erdogan didn’t really have a charismatic rival, the economy was in better shape and, most importantly, conservative voters were loyal to the AK Party [Justice and Development Party],” said Dimitar Bechev, author of the 2022 book “Turkey Under Erdogan: How the Country Turned Away from Democracy and the West.”
"Now, poll after poll shows that the cost of living is the main issue for Turkish citizens. Imamoglu addresses this concern and, as a result, connects with a wider electorate," Bechev told Radio Free Europe (RFE/RL).
Power in numbers
It is difficult to exaggerate the scale of the challenge that Imamoglu poses to Erdogan and the AK Party.
His arrest came just days before the March 23 preliminary vote, where he was expected to be confirmed as the opposition Republican People's Party (CHP) candidate for the presidential election scheduled for 2028.
Some 15 million citizens took part in the early voting – more than the number who voted for the CHP in the 2023 parliamentary elections – to express their support for the only candidate on the ballot.
On March 24, the CHP officially announced Imamoglu's candidacy.
At the time of his arrest, the 53-year-old was fighting a 2022 conviction and prison sentence for calling election officials "stupid" who annulled the result of his 2019 mayoral victory, forcing him to run and win again in a rerun.
The sentence of two and a half years in prison has not yet entered into force due to his appeal.
Meanwhile, shortly before his arrest, Imamoglu's university degree from Istanbul University was controversially revoked, leaving him without proof of higher education, which is a necessary requirement for presidential candidates in Turkey.
The accumulation of these actions against him has raised serious doubts about the claim of the authorities and pro-government media that the latest investigation into him and more than a hundred of his party colleagues is apolitical.
"Fortunately for [Imamoglu], these actions will only make him more popular," Ihor Semyvolos, Director of the Center for Middle East Studies in Kiev, told REL.
Known for his harsh rhetoric, Erdogan has accused the CHP of fomenting a "movement of violence" by supporting the protests, which have in most cases been peaceful, and of "sinking the economy" with a "show" that, according to him, will fade with time.
The CHP has condemned Imamoglu's arrest, calling it a "coup d'état" and held what it said was the party's final protest near Istanbul's city hall on the night of March 25, ahead of a new rally planned for March 29.
However, student protests have continued, as a group of students protesting near the Middle East University in Ankara were attacked by police with water cannons, pepper spray and rubber bullets in the early hours of March 27, the Associated Press reported.
Towards an 'elected dictatorship'?
Regardless of how events unfold on the streets, the CHP, the party most closely associated with the founder of modern Turkey, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, appears to have gained momentum.
This is largely thanks to Imamoglu, who has managed to reach beyond the party's traditional base - which includes urban, secular and educated segments of society - by using the optimistic slogan "everything will be fine", in stark contrast to Erdogan's more divisive rhetoric.
Constitutional restrictions state that Erdogan may not be able to run beyond his current term unless Parliament calls early elections or the basic law itself is changed.
But few people doubt that either of these will happen, which explains why the CHP held the primary elections so early.
A spokesman for Erdogan's AK Party confirmed in January that a fourth presidential term for Erdogan - who previously also served as prime minister - was "on our agenda".
Meanwhile, Devlet Bahceli, leader of the Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) and key supporter of Erdogan, has also expressed support for the idea.
In its Freedom in the World 2025 report, Freedom House ranked Turkey among the ten countries with the greatest decline in democratic freedoms over the last decade.
However, electoral races remain highly competitive, as evidenced by Imamoglu's victories in the mayoral elections in 2019 and 2024.
In 2024, CHP candidates won a higher percentage of the vote in local elections nationwide than the AK Party, dealing the ruling party, which Erdogan co-founded in 2001, one of its biggest blows since coming to power.
In an article for The Conversation, Ahmet T. Kuru, director of the Center for Islamic and Arab Studies at San Diego State University, wrote that Turkey's long-time leader has shown himself to be "a master of electoral maneuvering, promoting populist policies and manipulating media and electoral practices against opposition parties."
But, with an economy plagued by runaway inflation and a genuinely popular rival, Erdogan is now "really worried" that these tactics will no longer be enough, Kuru wrote.
If the ruling elite risks an even stronger crackdown, "Turkey's political system could shift from a fragile democracy to an 'elected dictatorship', similar to that of Vladimir Putin's Russia," the analyst argued./ REL (A2 Televizion)
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