The number of detainees in an investigation over alleged corruption at Izmir Metropolitan Municipality rose to 130 as four more suspects were detained by security forces on Wednesday. The suspects, including former Mayor Tunç Soyer, are accused of rigging public tenders and fraud.
Izmir is a bastion of the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), whose mayors have run the city for decades. Media outlets have reported that the incumbent CHP mayor of Türkiye’s third-largest city, Cemil Tugay, has filed a complaint against Soyer and other former bureaucrats of the municipality, and this has served as the basis for the new investigation that saw the detention of Soyer and others on Tuesday. Tugay denied the reports and said in a statement that the investigation stemmed from reports prepared by the Interior Ministry’s inspectors on the tenure of Soyer, who ran the city between 2019 and 2024, after his 10-year tenure as mayor of Izmir’s Seferihisar district. Officials from Izmir’s district municipalities and staff of the CHP’s district branches in Izmir, as well as the head of the CHP’s Izmir branch, Şenol Aslanoğlu, were among those detained on Tuesday.
The investigation focuses on IZBETON, a subsidiary of the municipality and subcontractor of the subsidiary allegedly involved in the corruption. Ihlas News Agency (IHA) reported on Wednesday that prosecutors had three separate cases regarding alleged irregularities and graft in tenders involving car rentals and road construction, as well as a building cooperative. A report included in the investigation says alleged corruption and irregularities cost the public billions of Turkish liras. In some cases, the municipality was billed and overcharged for concocted works by contractors, such as vehicles falsely documented as rented by the municipality.
Corruption allegations have spread across CHP-run municipalities since last year, leading to the detention and arrests of the party’s prominent names, including Istanbul Mayor Ekrem Imamoğlu, a future presidential candidate of the party.
President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has labeled the scandals as “tentacles of an octopus” of wrongdoings. The party itself is at the center of allegations of vote-buying in a 2023 intra-party vote that brought its current chair, Özgür Özel, to power. A hearing on Monday over election fraud allegations was postponed to September.
