Ertuğrul Kürkçü, Honorary Chairperson of the Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP), said that the government is attempting to reinforce its authoritarian regime by launching operations against the Republican People’s Party (CHP), even as it tries to project a more positive image through ongoing talks with Abdullah Öcalan.

Imamoğlu’s imprisonment: Not an ordinary legal case, but a political rupture

Ertuğrul Kürkçü underlined that the imprisonment of Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality Mayor Ekrem Imamoğlu cannot be regarded as a routine judicial process, emphasizing its deep political implications. He said: "Ekrem Imamoğlu’s imprisonment is not the mere arrest of a mayor. To offer a comparable example, we might look at what happened to Brazil’s current president, Lula, before the 2018 elections. Lula was the strongest candidate at the time and led the polls by a significant margin. But he was arrested and sentenced, which ultimately disqualified him from the presidential race. As a result, Bolsonaro, a political figure of the same lineage as Erdoğan, Trump, and Putin, was left unchallenged. Bolsonaro went on to become Brazil’s infamous president between 2018 and 2023, while Lula was behind bars. In 2021, Brazil’s Supreme Court ruled that the court which tried Lula lacked jurisdiction and had violated his right to a fair trial. And in 2022, the United Nations (UN) Human Rights Committee officially recognized and declared that Lula’s political rights had been unjustly taken away."

The case of Lula and Brazil

The judge who sentenced Lula, Sérgio Moro, later became the Minister of Justice under Bolsonaro. In a striking parallel, the chief prosecutor in Imamoglu’s case, Akın Gürlek, followed a similar path, having been appointed Deputy Minister of Justice. Before taking up that role in January 2023, Gürlek served as a judge and presiding judge at several high criminal courts in Istanbul, where he became known for issuing politically motivated and unjust rulings against individuals in conflict with the Erdoğan regime.

Among the cases over which he presided, were the prosecutions of Selahattin Demirtaş and Sırrı Süreyya Önder for their Newroz speeches; the conviction of Canan Kaftancıoğlu, Istanbul provincial chair of the CHP, for her social media posts; the case against Sözcü columnists Emin Çölaşan and Necati Doğru, who were accused of “knowingly and willingly aiding the Gülenists”; and the reversal of release orders for the Progressive Lawyers Association, including its president Selçuk Kozağaçlı, who were subsequently convicted of “membership in a terrorist organization.” Gürlek also refused to implement the Constitutional Court’s ruling on the violation of rights in the case of the CHP MP Enis Berberoğlu.

 Furthermore, in 2022, Gürlek was serving as the presiding judge of Istanbul’s 14th High Criminal Court, which rejected the appeals against the continued detention of Osman Kavala and seven others prosecuted in the Gezi Park trial.

The politicization of the judiciary: The case of Akın Gürlek

In Brazil, the Vaza Jato scandal later revealed through leaked messages that Judge Sérgio Moro had colluded with prosecutors to orchestrate a political conspiracy against Lula and other leaders of the Workers’ Party (PT). In the case of Akın Gürlek, the only missing element—at least for now—to complete the parallels with the Brazilian model is the publication of written or recorded communications between the judiciary and the Presidential Palace. And even in the absence of such disclosures, there is little doubt that such coordination has taken place.

For all these reasons, the imprisonment of Ekrem Imamoğlu cannot be dismissed as an ordinary 'corruption' case, as Erdoğan would so dearly like to present it. Imamoglu’s arrest marks the first and most significant blow dealt, so far, in what can only be described as a coup attempt carried out on March 19 against the Istanbul Municipality and the CHP.

The March 19 intervention: The second major assault and a new balance of power

This latest coup attempt, the final link in the chain of operations carried out by the palace regime in pursuit of absolute power, represents, after the July 15 coup attempt and the subsequent July 20 state of emergency, the second most significant assault in the ongoing sequence of illegitimate power grabs and interventions. In terms of its consequences, however, it can be said to have produced an even deeper political rupture than the coup of July 15–20. In that earlier episode, Erdoğan and the Justice and Development Party (AKP) pushed the already-delegitimized Fethullah Gülen movement into a coup position, exposing it politically and morally. At the moment when the Gülenists’ legitimacy collapsed entirely, Erdoğan succeeded in rallying much of the Turkish political establishment—including, to an extent, the CHP—to his side, delivering a crushing defeat to his adversaries. In doing so, the regime was able to erase all legal and constitutional violations committed throughout the process without provoking any lasting political reckoning. Everything was effectively swept under the rug and whitewashed.

The March 19 coup attempt, launched by the AKP and the Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) Ergenekon alliance under Erdoğan’s leadership, unfolded under an entirely different balance of power than that which emerged in the aftermath of July 15–20. At the time of this latest assault, the ruling bloc had already lost public consent, weakened by overlapping crises—above all the economic collapse. Stripped of all the mechanisms that once concealed its desperation to retain power, the regime resorted to an illegitimate attack on its rival and found itself faced with the very segments of society that had been absent from its opposition in July 2016.

The day Imamoğlu was thrown into prison, the presence of 15 to 16 million people who had knowingly and willingly voted for him—many of them with the hope of seeing him run for president—became a concrete indicator of this new balance of forces. Confronted with the realization that taking one step further would throw open the gates to civil war, the regime understood that it had no other choice but to settle for taking Imamoğlu hostage and then retreat. And yet, this trajectory cannot end here.

An opportunity for the opposition to resolve the Kurdish question

Those who have led the resistance against the coup cannot hope to satisfy the demands of the millions who rose up unless they succeed in driving the coup plotters out of their strongholds and bringing them before justice. Fully aware that, so long as this dual power situation persists, the regime will continue to decline in both domestic and foreign policy, it will likely seek a counteroffensive aimed at regaining psychological, moral, and political dominance. To do so, it may attempt to shift the game outside the bounds of conventional politics. The course of events remains open to all outcomes.

The most fundamental possibility for the opposition to decisively tip the balance in its own favor lies in this: incorporating into its political program a clear commitment to recognize the Kurdish Freedom Movement’s call for 'acknowledgment of democratic politics and legal frameworks' as a basis for removing armed struggle from the agenda. This is a movement that, from its historical leadership to its defense units, women’s forces, and dynamic structures across Kurdistan and the diaspora, has already charted a political direction.

To achieve this, the opposition must pledge to address these demands on the basis of Article 90 of the Turkish Constitution and in accordance with international agreements to which Turkey is a party: the United Nations (UN) Charter, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), the UN Declaration on the Right to Peace (adopted by UN General Assembly Resolution 71/189 of 19 December 2016), the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR), the European Charter of Local Self-Government (ECLSG), and the Copenhagen Criteria of the European Union (EU). This would mean guaranteeing a just resolution to the Kurdish question through a social negotiation process, removing all obstacles to freedom of expression and organization, and committing to a general amnesty. With this step, the opposition would be laying the foundation for a permanent and lasting path toward 'peace and negotiation' in Turkey, and would secure its place within the Kurdish people's vision for the future.

Threats and risks to Kurdish–Turkish dialogue

Reflecting on the risks posed to democratic politics and societal reconciliation by the large-scale operations against the CHP launched immediately after renewed talks with Abdullah Öcalan, Ertuğrul Kürkçü said: "This is a deadly risk. The regime is gambling with the Kurdish people’s intelligence and spirit. It is asking them to believe that they can live more freely and prosperously under the very same sovereignty that is now steering all of Turkey, including the opposition, toward an authoritarian-totalitarian regime it has designed itself.

These developments are bound to sow, at the very least, deep doubts among Kurds regarding the authenticity of the so-called ‘dialogue.’ Seeing that what has been done to them is now also being done to the CHP, many Kurds inevitably develop the sense that they are being dragged into a reactionary political project. The sacrifices made in the name of peace appear to have led not to any genuine peace, but instead to a regime that grows stronger by inflicting violence on the people. This perception drives large segments of society away from politics, fueling despair and deepening the alienation from democratic political engagement."

Kurdish political movement, Urban Consensus, and the CHP operation 

Ertuğrul Kürkçü evaluated the prospects for resolving the Kurdish question at a time when signals of renewed dialogue with the Kurdish Political Movement are being given, yet these signals are overshadowed by the judicial operations targeting the main opposition under the pretext of the so-called 'Urban Consensus', an initiative first brought forward through proposals from Kurdish political actors: "The indictment underlying the judiciary’s assault on CHP municipalities states the following: ‘The theory behind the Urban Consensus formula was developed by the leadership of the terrorist organization; it is a formula to be applied in certain areas within the democratic autonomy system. It was created with the plan of establishing an autonomy system by winning local governments in the eastern provinces and incorporating the Kurdish population into local governments in the western provinces through a system resembling autonomy, and it was named the “Urban Consensus” [...].’

In short, while the President and his junior partner are calling on the leadership of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) to lay down arms and dissolve the organization—effectively bringing to an end, both legally and practically, what they themselves define as ‘terrorism’—the same state continues to criminalize the Kurdish people’s pursuit of self-governance in local administrations across Northern Kurdistan, as well as any attempt to include the Kurdish population in western cities in local government through structures resembling autonomy. This is done through the hand of the regime’s ‘roving executioner.’

Under the so-called Urban Consensus, the mere fact that Kurds cast votes for CHP municipal councils in local elections is not only treated as a crime against them, but it also becomes the reason for branding the CHP itself as engaging in ‘terrorist’ activity. This indictment was authored by a chief prosecutor widely believed to be directly aligned with Tayyip Erdoğan, and it coincides with a period when declarations were reportedly being drafted on Imralı Island.

At the same time, the Mayor of Esenler, Professor Ahmet Özer, was arrested, followed by the detentions of Kurdish and socialist members of local government assemblies through the Democratic Society Congress (HDK) operation, and most recently, the Mayor of Şişli was detained for alleged activities carried out under the framework of the Urban Consensus. Istanbul Mayor Ekrem Imamoğlu has also become a target of similar accusations. In a regime where your act of voting can be held against you as evidence of criminal activity, how can you be certain that, one day, your calls to lay down arms, or your declared intent for civil disobedience, will not be reframed and prosecuted as evidence of your supposed participation in a ‘new form of terrorism’?"