A Turkish court on Monday convicted five mayors from municipalities controlled by the country’s main opposition party on corruption charges in a case critics have described as politically motivated.
The Istanbul court heard allegations involving bribery, bid-rigging and fraud related to municipal contracts. Critics of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s government say the case was aimed at weakening the opposition Republican People’s Party, or CHP, and that prosecutors relied on secret witnesses and testimony from defendants who implicated others in exchange for reduced sentences.
The Turkish government maintains that the country’s judiciary is independent and not subject to political influence.
The case centered on allegations that companies controlled by businessman Aziz Ihsan Aktas obtained municipal contracts through bribery, bid-rigging and fraud. The opposition has argued that municipalities controlled by Erdogan’s party that had business dealings with Aktas were not investigated with the same intensity.
Of the five mayors convicted, Riza Akpolat, mayor of Istanbul’s Besiktas district, received the longest sentence — 23 years and three months — for bribery, money laundering and bid-rigging.
The other four mayors, who like Akpolat were removed from office after their arrests, were sentenced to between five and eight years in prison.
The seven-month trial was held at a courthouse beside Silivri Prison, west of Istanbul, and involved 200 defendants. Some were also convicted while others were acquitted, although details of the individual verdicts were not immediately available.
Aktas was arrested in Istanbul in January last year, prompting authorities to launch investigations into other Istanbul districts governed by the CHP. Investigations were also opened in the southern cities of Adana and Adiyaman, which are also controlled by the opposition party.
Aktas initially denied the allegations but later testified against other defendants under Turkey’s “effective repentance” law. He alleged that he had given cash, cars and other bribes to mayors and officials to secure municipal contracts.
In a separate case, Aktas was sentenced to two years and eight months for bid-rigging but was acquitted of bribery charges.
Most defendants denied having any relationship with Aktas and accused him of providing false testimony. They also said the tenders had been awarded through long-established procedures and that previous audits had found no irregularities.
The prosecution’s use of secret witnesses was another contentious issue in the trial. Several of the witnesses acknowledged that their testimony was based on hearsay.
Akpolat told the court that investigators had offered to withdraw the charges against him if he provided information in a separate investigation involving the CHP’s 2023 leadership congress.
That investigation resulted in a court order in May removing the CHP’s top leadership over alleged voting irregularities during the leadership election. Many CHP members subsequently followed ousted leader Ozgur Ozel to the New Party, which has since become the largest opposition group in parliament.
The CHP won several major cities, including Istanbul and the capital Ankara, in the 2019 local elections. It secured further victories in the 2024 municipal polls, but a series of legal cases against the opposition has followed.
Ekrem Imamoglu, Istanbul’s metropolitan mayor and the opposition’s preferred candidate to challenge Erdogan in the next presidential election, has been in detention since March last year.
He faces several legal cases, including a major corruption case involving the Istanbul municipality that contains allegations similar to those in the Aktas case. If convicted in the cases, he could face a combined sentence of more than 2,300 years.