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Background

Turkey's rule of law: jailed mayors and institutions under trustees

When a Turkish mayor is jailed for corruption, the interior minister suspends them and their own council elects a stand-in. Appointing a trustee is the terrorism route, not the corruption one. The suspension runs to final judgment, and in the Istanbul case the court has given itself up to twelve and a half years.

Turkey's Municipal Law lets the interior minister suspend a jailed mayor until final judgment. In the Istanbul case the court's own form targets 4,600 days at most, about twelve and a half years. Ekrem İmamoğlu has been in custody since 23 March 2025.
Turkey's rule of law: jailed mayors and institutions under trustees

Since the 2024 local elections, prosecutors have opened corruption investigations into one opposition-run Turkish municipality after another. The core case is Istanbul, where mayor Ekrem İmamoğlu has been in custody since 23 March 2025 and a 3,800-page indictment naming 402 defendants went to trial on 9 March 2026. Then came the districts. Sinem Dedetaş, mayor of Üsküdar, was detained on 29 July 2026. Erdal Beşikçioğlu, mayor of Etimesgut in Ankara, was remanded on the morning of 3 August. İlkay Çiçek, mayor of Menderes in İzmir, was detained soon after.

Article 47 of Municipal Law 5393 lets the interior minister suspend a mayor under investigation for an offence connected to the office. The ministry called each suspension a temporary measure. The article does not use that word. It sets one outer limit, final judgment, and requires review every two months. In the Istanbul case the court's target-duration form aims at 4,600 days, about twelve and a half years. On that timetable an elected mayor can be out of office for more than a decade with nothing decided.

Article 45 decides who takes over. The council elects an acting mayor from among its own members by secret ballot, and if it has not done so within fifteen days the rules on dissolving the council apply. Üsküdar's councillors chose the CHP's Sibel Tan Çetinkaya on 5 August, by 22 votes to 18 in the fourth round, and the AKP reported the vote to prosecutors. Etimesgut's chose the CHP's Seda Dilber on 10 August. Both districts stayed with the party that won them in 2024.

A paragraph added by decree-law in 2016 removes the vote where the offence is terrorism. The interior minister then appoints the stand-in in metropolitan and provincial municipalities, the governor elsewhere. Batman went that way. Gülistan Sönük was suspended in November 2024 over a six-year sentence for membership of an armed terrorist organisation, and Batman's governor took her chair with no council vote. The Venice Commission calls it particularly worrying that emergency legislation lets central authorities appoint unelected mayors and exercise discretionary control over those municipalities without judicial control.

In late July 2026 Istanbul's 8th Criminal Judgeship of Peace handed management of the earthquake charity AHBAP's assets to three trustees and recorded that dissolution proceedings had begun. That is a criminal court acting on an association, not the interior ministry acting on a municipality. A separate decision placed the charity's economic enterprise and twelve companies under the state savings deposit insurance fund, the TMSF. Its founder, the singer Haluk Levent, was remanded on 16 July. Beginning dissolution is not closure.

”Although the indictments of many detainees are ready, no indictment has yet been drawn up against the 5 mayors who have been in custody for 9.5 months.”
İbrahim KaboğluPresident of the Istanbul Bar Association

The numbers

Municipal Law 5393, article 47: suspension
Municipal organs or their members, against whom an investigation or prosecution has been opened for an offence connected to their duties, may be suspended from office by the interior minister until final judgment. The decision is reviewed every two months and lifted where there is no longer a public interest in maintaining it. The article does not use the word temporary; it fixes the outer limit as final judgment and requires review every two months. The wording is taken from the law as adopted on 3 July 2005.
Türkiye Büyük Millet Meclisi
Municipal Law 5393, articles 45 and 46: who takes over
If the mayor is suspended or jailed, the council elects an acting mayor from among its own members by secret ballot: two thirds of the full membership in the first two rounds, an absolute majority of the full membership in the third, and in a fourth round between the two leading candidates whoever takes the most votes. A tie is settled by lot. If the election is not completed within fifteen days at the latest, the provisions on dissolving the council apply. Article 46 covers the case where the post is vacant and no election of a mayor or acting mayor can be held: the interior minister then names the person who takes over in metropolitan and provincial municipalities, the governor elsewhere. Both articles are given here from the law as adopted on 3 July 2005, and the exception added in 2016 is set out separately.
Türkiye Büyük Millet Meclisi
The 2016 exception: appointment in terrorism cases
Article 38 of emergency decree-law 674 added a paragraph to article 45 of the Municipal Law. Where a mayor, a deputy mayor or a council member is suspended from duty, detained, banned from public service or has the position terminated over the offences of aiding and abetting terrorism and terrorist organisations, it is no longer for the council to elect the replacement. The interior minister names the replacement in metropolitan and provincial municipalities and the governor elsewhere, and the only condition the decree lays down is that the person appointed be eligible for the post. The Venice Commission, asked by the Council of Europe's Congress of Local and Regional Authorities to examine the decree, records that it was issued on 1 September 2016 and approved by parliament on 10 November 2016, and calls it particularly worrying that through emergency legislation the central authorities are enabled, in the framework of the fight against terrorism, to appoint unelected mayors, vice mayors and members of local councils and to exercise discretionary control over the municipalities concerned without judicial control.
Venice Commission
Istanbul's districts: before and after
18 of 39
In the local elections of 31 March 2024 the CHP won 26 of Istanbul's 39 district municipalities and the AKP 13. After the recent party changes the CHP ran 18 and the AKP 19, while trustees had been appointed in two municipalities. BBC News Türkçe, whose count this is, does not say which two they are or under which provision the trustees were appointed. The figures come from a report published on 1 August 2026 and updated on 3 August.
BBC News Türkçe
The Istanbul case: scale and the court's target duration
4,600 days
The 3,800-page indictment, drawn up by the Istanbul chief public prosecutor's office, was accepted by the court on 25 November 2025 and the trial opened on 9 March 2026 before Istanbul's 40th Heavy Penal Court. 402 people are on trial, of whom 105 are in custody, 170 under judicial control and 7 sought under arrest warrant. For Ekrem İmamoğlu, in custody since 23 March 2025 and accused of leading a criminal organisation, up to 2,430 years in prison is sought. The court's target-duration form targets completion within 4,600 days at most, about twelve and a half years, and notes the period may lengthen for reasons attributable to the parties. DW reports that a large part of the evidence rests on suspect statements and on statements by people granted leniency under the Turkish effective-remorse rule, that 25 of those named as leaders or members of the organisation were granted it, and that the criminal-organisation account is built on 15 code-named secret witnesses.
DW Türkçe
AHBAP: two separate trustee structures
Istanbul's 8th Criminal Judgeship of Peace granted the prosecutor's request and transferred management of all the association's assets to three trustees: the lawyers Rıdvan Can and Mustafa Göktuğ Kaya and Professor Ahmet Kasım Han. By a separate decision the TMSF was appointed trustee over thirteen entities, the association's economic enterprise and twelve companies, among them Ahbap Lojistik and Globus Savunma Sanayi. The decision recorded that the association's activities had ended, that measures had been placed on its assets and accounts, and that dissolution proceedings had begun.
Anadolu Ajansı
Etimesgut: the charges and the choice of successor
The interior ministry said the investigation is being conducted for forming an organisation for the purpose of committing crime and membership of it, embezzlement, bribery, extortion by a public official, rigging a tender, improper interference with the performance of a contract, and abuse of office. Of the 55 people detained on 30 July 2026 the prosecution sought the remand of 44, and 40 people including mayor Erdal Beşikçioğlu were remanded on the morning of 3 August. The ministry announced his suspension as a temporary measure. He rejected all the charges in police questioning, saying he had no authority over the municipality's tenders and that some of the irregularities in reports by the Turkish audit authority, the Sayıştay, had emerged from an internal audit he had himself ordered. On 10 August the council elected the CHP's Seda Dilber acting mayor.
BBC News Türkçe
Üsküdar: the charges and the vote on the successor
22–18
The investigation is run by the Istanbul Anatolian chief public prosecutor's office over irregularities in building and occupancy permit processes, and for bribery, extortion by a public official and forming an organisation for the purpose of committing crime. Mayor Sinem Dedetaş was detained on 29 July 2026 and remanded in custody, and on 1 August the ministry announced that she had been suspended as a temporary measure. On 5 August the CHP's candidate Sibel Tan Çetinkaya was elected acting mayor in the fourth round by 22 votes to 18. The AKP contested the result, and its district chair Taha Sarıcaoğlu made two criminal complaints to prosecutors about the vote on 10 August.
BBC News Türkçe
The opposition that holds the municipalities has split
Özgür Özel presented Yeni Parti in Ankara on 24 July 2026. Following its formation and the defection of 91 lawmakers, the CHP has 44 seats left, while the AKP is the largest party with 277 of the 600 seats in parliament. The figures are Al Jazeera's, published on 28 July 2026. The mayors discussed here were elected for the CHP in 2024 and their council groups remain the CHP's, so it is CHP councillors who elect the stand-ins.
Al Jazeera

What the comparison shows

Where they agree

Everyone quoted here accepts the same sequence of events. A mayor is detained, the interior ministry suspends them, and within days a council or a governor fills the chair. Erdoğan, Kaboğlu, Özdemir and Sönük argue over why it happens and who gains by it, not over whether it happens.

Where they split

Erdoğan and Haluk Levent are describing the same investigation, two weeks apart. The president says the AHBAP documents show what was done to the state after the earthquakes. Levent, who founded the charity, admits pledging its cheques and promissory notes as collateral and calls that irregularity rather than corruption. In the municipal cases the argument is a different one, about what came first, the evidence or the arrest. Kaboğlu said in March 2026 that five mayors had been held nine and a half months with no indictment drawn up, and concluded that the arrests follow party membership. His count does not cover the Istanbul file, whose indictment was accepted on 25 November 2025. Çiçek rejects the evidence itself. Özdemir attacks none of the prosecutions and goes after the Üsküdar ballot, and in Sönük's case there was no ballot at all.

What nobody is saying

The councils kept Üsküdar and Etimesgut, and the CHP still fell from 26 of Istanbul's 39 districts in March 2024 to 18 by early August 2026, against 19 for the AKP. Only two municipalities are under trustees. BBC News Türkçe puts the rest of the shift down to party changes, one of them Şile's acting mayor, who was elected by CHP councillors after their own mayor was jailed and who joined the AKP on 1 August. The same report does not say under which provision the two trustee municipalities fall, and we could not establish it, although that is the question that tests the whole split between the two routes. Nor could we find an authority or a party publishing a nationwide figure for detained municipal politicians.

Who says what

Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, President of Türkiye

Erdoğan treats the AHBAP investigation as a matter of evidence coming to light rather than politics. He addressed it at the second Communication Council, saying that those who engaged in opportunism after the earthquakes are now answering to justice, wherever that leads.

”Çarpık ilişkiler tek tek ortaya çıkıyor. Ortaya dökülen bilgi ve belgeler 6 Şubat depremleri sürecinde devlete ve millete hangi operasyonların çekildiğini hepimize çok net biçimde gösteriyor.”The crooked relationships are coming out one by one. The information and documents that have been laid out show all of us very clearly what operations were run on the state and the nation during the 6 February earthquakes.
Source: Gazete Oksijen · Tuesday, 28 July 2026
İbrahim Kaboğlu, President of the Istanbul Bar Association

Kaboğlu inverts the order between evidence and detention. After visiting Silivri prison he pointed out that indictments are delayed for months for jailed mayors while people detained later already have theirs, and concluded that the arrests follow party membership rather than conduct. He describes it as a continuing mass manufacture of crime against those held.

”Birçok tutuklunun iddianamesi hazır olduğu halde, 9,5 aydır tutuklu bulunan 5 belediye başkanı hakkında iddianame henüz hazırlanmış değildir.”Although the indictments of many detainees are ready, no indictment has yet been drawn up against the 5 mayors who have been in custody for 9.5 months.
Source: BirGün · Wednesday, 4 March 2026
Haluk Levent, Musician, founder and chair of AHBAP, remanded in custody on 16 July 2026

Levent neither rejects the allegations outright nor defends his own bookkeeping. In police questioning he admitted using the association's cheques and promissory notes as collateral and taking on heavy debt, but maintained that this is irregularity and not corruption. He also said the 4.3 billion lira raised after the earthquakes was accounted for in the interior ministry's association audits for 2023, 2024 and 2025, and argued that the timing of the operation was chosen deliberately.

”Ahbap çeklerini ve senetlerini kimi yerlerde teminat olarak kullandım. Yüksek miktarda borçlandım. Bunun adına usulsüzlük diyebilirsiniz ama yolsuzluk diyemezsiniz.”I used Ahbap's cheques and promissory notes as collateral in some places. I took on debt in large amounts. You can call this irregularity, but you cannot call it corruption.
Source: ANKA Haber Ajansı · Wednesday, 15 July 2026 · From the record of his police questioning on 14 July, published by the ANKA news agency, which says it is going on information it obtained rather than on an official release. Levent stopped answering at one point, saying he was not being allowed to speak about politicians and state institutions and would therefore exercise his right to silence.
İlkay Çiçek, Mayor of Menderes in İzmir, elected for the CHP, detained on 4 August 2026

Çiçek disputes not merely the motive but the evidence itself. In police questioning he said the WhatsApp exchanges circulated on social media are entirely fabricated and produced with artificial intelligence. His lawyer had made a criminal complaint about them to prosecutors on 12 June 2026, nearly two months before his detention. He also said he had never witnessed any act of bribery in the municipality.

”Ben sosyal medyaya yansıyan yazışmaları yapmadım. Bu yazışmalar tamamen kurmaca, yapay zekâ ile üretilmiş yazışmalardır.”I did not have the exchanges that appeared on social media. Those exchanges are entirely fabricated, produced with artificial intelligence.
Source: Gazete Yenigün · Thursday, 6 August 2026 · The record of his police questioning surfaced in the press. Gazete Yenigün states that it is following Halk TV's report; we were unable to open Halk TV's own page.
Abdullah Özdemir, AKP provincial chair for Istanbul

Özdemir attacks not the prosecutions but the vote that followed them. After the CHP's candidate won the acting mayoralty of Üsküdar in the fourth round, he called the proceedings a seizure of will and said the party would challenge the result in court. He criticised the adjournment before the final round and the presence of Yeni Parti's Istanbul provincial chair, Özgür Çelik, in the chamber. The AKP's objection therefore runs against two opposition parties at once.

”bu baskı, tehdit ve şantajların karşılığında bazı meclis üyelerini sindirdiklerini gördük”We saw that this pressure, these threats and this blackmail cowed some council members
Source: Artı Gerçek · Wednesday, 5 August 2026
Gülistan Sönük, Former mayor of Batman for the DEM Party, suspended and replaced by a trustee in November 2024

The interior ministry suspended Sönük in November 2024, in the same words about a temporary measure later used of Dedetaş and Beşikçioğlu. The stated grounds were a six-year sentence for membership of an armed terrorist organisation and a continuing investigation on the same charge, and the Batman governor was appointed in her place with no council vote. She calls it a seizure and says municipalities belong to the people.

”31 Mart seçimlerinde Türkiye geneli en yüksek oy oranıyla kadınların gençlerin ve halkımızın emeği ile aldığımız belediyemiz bize hiçbir tebligat yapılmadan bu sabah itibarıyla gasp edilmiştir.”Our municipality, which we won in the 31 March elections with the highest share of the vote in all of Türkiye through the labour of women, of the young and of our people, has as of this morning been seized from us without any notification being served on us.
Source: BBC News Türkçe · Monday, 4 November 2024

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