An Istanbul court convicted five opposition mayors on Monday, sentencing them to prison terms ranging from five years to more than 23 years on corruption-related charges, Turkish media reported.
All five mayors belonged to the Republican People's Party (CHP), the social democratic opposition to President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, and had been arrested in the first half of 2025. The CHP has increasingly come under the scrutiny of Turkey's justice system in recent years.
Mixed verdicts among the accused
The opposition mayor of Adıyaman, in southeastern Turkey, was acquitted. Another defendant, elected mayor of Istanbul's most populous suburb in 2024, was sentenced to eight months in prison, suspended, for abuse of power through negligence, at the end of a trial that had opened in late February.
Rıza Akpolat, mayor of Istanbul's Beşiktaş district, was cleared of belonging to a criminal organization but found guilty of corruption, money laundering and irregularities in public contracts. He received the heaviest sentence, 23 years and three months, according to Turkey's official Anadolu news agency.
Aziz İhsan Aktaş, a repentant businessman whose confessions had implicated local opposition officials, was acquitted, Anadolu reported. Aktaş had originally been accused of leading the alleged criminal organization to which the mayors belonged and had faced a sentence of up to 280 years.
Akpolat denies wrongdoing
Akpolat told the court he was innocent and that there was no solid evidence against him, saying the case rested entirely on statements from slanderers, according to the ANKA news agency.
CHP under pressure
The CHP won a major victory over Erdogan's AKP in the 2024 local elections, but the party has since been weakened by numerous investigations and arrests. Dozens of mayors elected on the CHP ticket have been arrested and removed from office across Turkey.
The removal of the party's leader last spring prompted him to found a new party, the Yeni Parti, or New Party, in late July.
İmamoğlu case looms over CHP
Istanbul mayor Ekrem İmamoğlu, a former leading CHP figure who has since joined the Yeni Parti, was arrested last year while preparing to be named a candidate for Turkey's next presidential election, officially scheduled for 2028.
His arrest and pretrial detention on corruption charges, which he denies, triggered the largest wave of protests and challenges to Erdogan's rule in Turkey since 2013.
