Access to social media accounts of Istanbul’s imprisoned opposition mayor Ekrem Imamogul was blocked by Turkish authorities.
Imamoglu, the main rival of President Receptacle Erdogan, is no longer able to send messages in Türkiye to its 9.7 million followers on X. His account is still accessible overseas.
His social media feeds were his main tool to communicate with his supporters and to keep himself in the public eye.
He would post daily by sending messages from prison via his lawyer. “It’s like the authorities want to disappear,” one commentator said.
The Republican People’s Party (CHP) of Imamogul – a major Turkish opposition party – said blocking his accounts was a continuation of the “attempt of a coup on March 19th.”
“Now they don’t even allow him to talk to the public,” said CHP Executive Director Selin Saek Boke. This is the next attempt at a coup on the ballot box. ”
Polls suggest that Ekrem Imamoguru, who has been elected three times mayor of Turkey’s biggest city, will win the presidential election if he can stand.
The next presidential election is not scheduled to take place until 2028.
A message on his account on Thursday said it was blocked due to legal requests, but it is still available in Turkey using a Virtual Private Network (VPN).
The lawyer representing X said at the request of a social media platform he filed a court challenge to the ban.
Istanbul’s prosecutors are investigating posts about Imamogul’s accounts based on the basis that it could constitute inciting a crime, according to the president’s communications office.
In that post last month, the mayor condemned his arrest and wider crackdown on the opposition parties, calling on the nation to sue him “talking your voice.”
Some X users have replaced their profile photos with images of the mayor, including Yusuf Can, an analyst for the Wilson Center Middle East Program in Washington.
“Elon Musk has blocked the description of hostage mayor and presidential candidates at Erdogan’s request. It has silenced the country’s most prominent opposition. We are all Imamoguru,” he said.
The mayor has been behind the bar since March on corruption charges he denied.
He is being detained at Marmara High Security Prison in Silibri, on the outskirts of the city where he was elected to run.
He has a lot of companies – about 100 people were arrested with him – including city officials and members of his party. Dozens more have been arrested, including his lawyers and lawyers acting for those lawyers.
Human rights groups say the arrests are part of an accelerated attack on Turkish civil society.
Supporters of Imamoguru say the charges against him are politically motivated and the turkey court has been weaponized. The government says the judiciary is independent.
His latest post, Wednesday, Imamoguru called on supporters to attend a protest rally in Istanbul that night.
This has been one of the biggest in recent weeks, with tens of thousands of people appearing.
His arrest in March sparked Türkiye’s biggest anti-government protest for over a decade.
The protests were almost peaceful, but within a few days around 2,000 people were arrested, many of whom were students.
The demonstrations continue in Istanbul and across the country, but numbers are becoming smaller.
