A fifth wave of operations centered on Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality (IBB) and municipalities run by the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP) led to the detention of 34 people as of Sunday. Authorities have launched anti-corruption operations on Saturday and raided 47 locations. Seven suspects remain at large.
CHP-run municipalities are accused of taking bribes and irregularities in public tenders. President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has recently described operations and allegations as “tentacles of an octopus” stretching across many administrative bodies running the municipalities.
Although CHP-run municipalities were already under investigation and several mayors were detained for corruption last year, IBB has been under the spotlight as its high-profile mayor was arrested in March on graft charges. Digging deeper into an alleged criminal network run by former Mayor Ekrem Imamoğlu and expanding another investigation linked to a businessman who was awarded a lucrative contract by district municipalities, investigators launched Saturday’s operations against municipality officials, mayors and a former CHP lawmaker. Operations are the culmination of four separate investigations and are mainly based on the confessions of Aziz Ihsan Aktaş, a businessman identified as the head of a criminal network active in municipalities. Aktaş’s confessions unveiled the scale of corruption at IBB, the municipality of Beşiktaş, whose mayor was detained last year, and at Büyükçekmece Municipality, whose mayor, Hasan Akgün, was detained on Saturday. The investigation also extended to Adana, a southern province; the mayors of Adana’s Seyhan and Ceyhan municipalities were also detained.
Among other prominent names in the case are Aykut Erdoğdu, a former lawmaker for CHP, the party’s assembly member Baki Aydöner, mayors of Istanbul’s Avcılar and Gaziosmanpaşa districts, and the head of ISFALT, an asphalt production subsidiary of IBB.
Media outlets reported on Sunday that a search of premises owned by some suspects led to the discovery of a large cache of dollars and gold, including a search of the residences of Akgün and his son-in-law.
The Sabah newspaper reported that Aktaş appealed to authorities on April 30 to benefit from leniency in sentencing in exchange for collaboration with authorities. Aktaş, who was arrested on Jan. 17, detailed how municipalities that awarded contracts to his companies enriched themselves in the process. He confessed that he paid bribes to mayors and deputy mayors to win tenders and, in some cases, had to buy properties or vehicles belonging to those people at prices far higher than their real value, instead of paying them bribes in cash, in order to avoid detection. Aktaş said he was also forced to make additional payments and donate vehicles to mayoral candidates of the CHP before the 2024 municipal polls, to be used in their election campaigns. He said he also paid bribes to numerous municipal officials for the acquisition of a valuable plot of land in the district of Gaziosmanpaşa.
The CHP has claimed that anti-graft operations against municipalities were politically motivated, but officials deny it and point to the independence of the judiciary, which carries out the operations. In the first wave of 2025 operations against municipalities, Imamoğlu and 105 others were detained on March 19 and remain incarcerated in pretrial detention. Looking to earn popularity for Imamoğlu, the CHP has declared him its presidential candidate for the upcoming elections, although annulment of his university diploma days before his detention over irregularities made the former mayor ineligible to run for top office.
In the second wave of operations on April 25, 50 people were detained, including the head of IBB’s water utility and other top municipal officials. On May 22, authorities ordered the detention of 22 suspects in an investigation into irregular public tenders by IBB’s media and culture subsidiaries. Two days later, seven more people were detained and subsequently arrested over corruption in tenders by another IBB subsidiary. Investigation expanded on May 23 and led to the detention of 44 people working at IBB’s other subsidiaries and people associated with them.
According to Sabah’s report, authorities also investigated the 2019 celebrations for Republic Day organized by the Beşiktaş municipality. Four municipal officials, including the current deputy mayors of Avcılar and Büyükçekmece, are accused of conspiring to commit corruption by awarding the contract for organizing the celebrations to a front company and squandering public resources in the process.
The report says recent detentions include two owners of a company that was awarded a lucrative contract by IBB. CHP’s deputy chair, Özgür Karabat, serves as financial consultant for the company, which earned more than TL 19 billion in tenders in the past five years.
According to the Sabah report, former lawmaker Erdoğdu is accused of acting as an intermediary for bribe takers and companies paying bribes. The report says Erdoğdu oversaw the payment of bribes to an IBB subsidiary.
In a speech last week, President Erdoğan hit out at CHP for defending Imamoğlu and others detained on corruption charges.
“If you don’t work for the nation, you are either a 'rantçı' (profiteer) or a 'bantçı' (someone who uses tape to conceal something),” to the applause of the audience. “Bantçı” in this case refers to a bodyguard of Imamoğlu who was captured in footage as he put tape on security cameras before Imamoğlu’s secretive meeting at a hotel with fellow bureaucrats of IBB. Media outlets reported that the footage emerged in the investigation into the former mayor’s alleged wrongdoings, raising suspicions about the nature of the meeting, which was followed and preceded by more at the same hotel. Some reports claimed that the meeting and others were the venue of discussions on how to share illegal profits Imamoğlu and others gained through graft, from rigging public tenders to bribery in exchange for building permits.
“You see what happened to profiteers, you see what state they drove Istanbul into. We witnessed how they terrorized the squares. They do not tolerate anyone other than themselves. They try to bully anyone who disagrees with them, they attack anyone who does not side with thieves,” Erdoğan said. The CHP held pro-Imamoğlu rallies, claiming the innocence of the mayor, after Imamoğlu’s arrest in March. Rallies in Istanbul and other cities escalated into violent riots. The CHP supporters also launched social media campaigns against celebrities not endorsing the rallies, while the party’s leader, Özgür Özel, called for a boycott of companies he accused of serving the government’s interests, as well as against broadcasters not broadcasting the rallies live.
The president stated that they witnessed a new act of corruption surfacing “almost every day” in the investigation into what he called a criminal organization. “You see how they looted Istanbul’s resources. (The authorities) reveal tentacles of an octopus extending from Istanbul to other cities, to abroad. Their own friends confess how they extorted money and received bribes,” Erdoğan said.
Ertan Yıldız, a top IBB bureaucrat, has also recently collaborated with authorities and unveiled a scheme of tender rigging and bribes organized by Imamoğlu and his associates at the municipality.
“Their former partners in crime speak about cash carried by suitcases, about a mob order established in Istanbul. But the CHP has no shame. They are supposed to apologize to the people of Istanbul they betrayed, but instead, they threaten judges and prosecutors and journalists,” Erdoğan said, referring to past remarks by Özel and other top names of the CHP who threatened judiciary members with being tried in the future for the investigation into Imamoğlu’s alleged wrongdoings.
“Their friends who confess are accused of defaming (the detained municipal officials). Özgür Özel is acting like a messenger for a criminal organization, not as a main opposition leader. It is worrying. It is worrying to see this sorry state the CHP was pushed to,” Erdoğan said.
“You can’t remove this stain of corruption. You can’t escape being held accountable. The Turkish judiciary’s job is to stop hands from stealing from public funds. We will not turn a blind eye to this banditry. Nor will we leave our Istanbul to its fate,” Erdoğan added.
