Ümit Özdağ, the head of Turkey’s ultranationalist Victory Party, on Wednesday denounced a wave of corruption investigations targeting figures from the country’s main opposition party as politically motivated and damaging to public trust.
Özdağ was released from pretrial detention on Tuesday after being sentenced to more than two years in prison for inciting public hatred. The court cited time served in ordering his release, ending nearly five months behind bars.
Özdağ still faces separate charges of insulting the president — an offense frequently used against critics of President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan — with the next hearing scheduled for September 10.
In remarks to the Anka news agency on Wednesday, Özdağ criticized what he described as the government’s selective application of the law, pointing to the barrage of corruption probes launched in recent months against mayors and officials from the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP).
“The application of one law for the ruling AKP [Erdoğan’s Justice and Development Party] and another for the opposition is causing an extraordinarily harmful fragmentation within society,” Özdağ said. “You cannot convince the public that only CHP municipalities are involved in corruption, while AKP municipalities are entirely clean.”
Over the past nine months Turkish prosecutors have opened dozens of investigations into CHP-run municipalities, particularly after the party’s sweeping victory in the March 2024 local elections, which dealt a major blow to the AKP.
The most high-profile case involves İstanbul Mayor Ekrem İmamoğlu, the CHP’s presidential candidate for 2028 and a prominent Erdoğan rival. He was detained in March on graft and terrorism-related accusations and was subsequently arrested on charges of corruption in a case widely seen by critics as politically driven.
İmamoğlu’s detention triggered nationwide protests in the largest wave of street unrest since the 2013 Gezi Park demonstrations.
© Agence France-Presse