January 23, 2026, 3:34 p.mJanuary 23, 2026, 3:34 p.m
Ahmet Özer, here at a conference in September 2023. (archive image)Image: www.imago-images.de
More than a year after his dismissal as district mayor in Istanbul, an opposition politician in Turkey has been sentenced to a long prison sentence.
The court considered it proven that Ahmet Özer was a member of the banned Kurdish Workers’ Party PKK and sentenced him to six years and three months in prison for membership in a terrorist organization, the state news agency Anadolu reported.
Özer defended himself against the allegations and said that they had been refuted by the evidence and witness statements collected. The public prosecutor ignored objections and thereby violated his rights. The verdict can still be appealed.
Özer, a member of the opposition CHP party, was deposed as mayor of Istanbul’s Esenyurt district and arrested in October 2024. The action marked the beginning of a crackdown on the Turkish opposition, in the course of which dozens of CHP politicians were deposed – including Istanbul Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu, for whom prosecutors are now demanding more than 2,400 years in prison.
Özer was elected mayor in the predominantly Kurdish district in March 2024. The CHP partially cooperated with the pro-Kurdish party DEM in the local elections. In Esenyurt, for example, both parties had agreed on Özer as their candidate. This tactic was described in the indictment as a mechanism by which the PKK attempted to penetrate politics.
The CHP achieved surprising success in the national elections and won most of the mayoral offices in the country. (sda/dpa)