Turkish police detained 56 people, including five deputy mayors and two city council members, on Tuesday in a corruption investigation targeting the Bakırköy district municipality in İstanbul, run by the opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP).
The Bakırköy Chief Public Prosecutor’s Office issued detention orders for 68 suspects following allegations of irregularities in municipal tenders that caused financial losses to the public and unlawful demands for payments from business owners seeking operating licenses.
Those detained included deputy mayors Nurcan Alan, Ali Rıza Akyüz, Cemalettin Özdemir, Arda Karadağ and Abdülhamit Pehlivan, along with two city council members.
Prosecutors said in a statement that they had received complaints alleging that irregularities constituting criminal offenses had occurred in tenders for goods and services, resulting in losses to public funds.
The complaints also alleged that municipal officials demanded unlawful payments from business owners applying for operating licenses and deliberately delayed the applications of those who refused to pay.
The prosecutor’s office said it had ordered the detention and questioning of 68 suspects, including deputy mayors, city council members, municipal employees and representatives of companies that participated in municipal tenders. The order also authorized search and seizures as part of the investigation.
The operation took place on the day Bakırköy Mayor Ayşegül Ovalıoğlu and city council members were expected to leave the CHP and join the New Party, a breakaway opposition party established in July by former CHP leader Özgür Özel.
Özel and 90 other lawmakers resigned from the CHP to establish the New Party on July 24 after an Ankara court annulled the CHP’s 2023 leadership election in May, removed Özel as chairman and reinstated his predecessor, Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu. The New Party subsequently became the largest opposition group in parliament, replacing the CHP as the main parliamentary opposition.
The Bakırköy operation is the latest in a series of corruption investigations targeting municipalities won by the CHP in the March 2024 local elections, when the party defeated President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) nationwide and retained control of İstanbul and Ankara.
The investigations began in October 2024 with the arrest of Ahmet Özer, the CHP mayor of İstanbul’s Esenyurt district, who was removed from office and replaced by a government-appointed trustee.
The crackdown intensified in March 2025 with the arrest of İstanbul Mayor Ekrem İmamoğlu, one of Erdoğan’s most prominent political rivals, who remains jailed pending trial on corruption charges he denies.
Since the 2024 elections, opposition municipalities have faced investigations that have led to the imprisonment and suspension of elected mayors, with government-appointed trustees taking over some local administrations.
A tally published earlier this month by the İlke TV news website put the number of mayors elected from the CHP who had been arrested since the elections at 40, including some who were subsequently released.
Opposition parties accuse the government of using the judiciary to weaken its political rivals and reverse the opposition’s gains in the 2024 local elections. The government denies political interference and maintains that prosecutors and courts act independently.
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