President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s government is escalating its crackdown on the Republican People’s Party (CHP), which came first in last year’s local elections, and the Kurdish nationalist Peoples’ Equality and Democracy Party (DEM).

A total of 10 people, including deputy mayors and municipal councillors, were detained on Tuesday in nine CHP district municipalities in Istanbul (Kartal, Ataşehir, Üsküdar, Sancaktepe, Fatih, Tuzla, Adalar, Şişli, Beyoğlu). Abdullah Zeydan, mayor of the Van Metropolitan Municipality of the DEM party, was sentenced to 3 years and 9 months in a court case on charges of “supporting a terrorist organisation” and “propaganda for a terrorist organisation through the press”.

The World Socialist Web Site and the Socialist Equality Group, regardless of their political differences with the CHP and the DEM Party, oppose this undemocratic state repression and demand the immediate release of those detained. The abolition of basic democratic rights on the pretext of unfounded “terrorist” charges must stop.

The Istanbul Terrorism Crimes Investigation Bureau’s operation against CHP municipalities is justified by the legal electoral alliance between the CHP and the DEM Party, known as the “Urban Consensus”, in the local elections on 31 March. More than 20 million voters across the country voted for the two parties.

The Istanbul Chief Public Prosecutor’s Office is creating a “crime” that does not exist and is trying to legitimise this operation on the basis that the electoral alliance between two legal parties was praised in the media by officials of the illegal Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK).

The statement of the Chief Public Prosecutor's Office associates the “Urban Consensus” with autonomy, which is a legal demand, and claims that the inclusion of “Kurds” in municipal administrations through this alliance is a criminal offence: “With the Urban Consensus formula, Kurds in western provinces and districts sought to obtain a certain number of quotas in the municipal councils in exchange for a candidate to be agreed upon and supported by the parties, even if they could not win the municipalities. Thus, they aimed to have a say in the decisions of the municipal councils, to take part in local governments and to become a political counterweight.”

This operation is part of a wider police state crackdown that has recently targeted political parties, the media and other sections of the public. In November, the CHP mayor of Istanbul Esenyurt, Ahmet Özer, was arrested on similar charges and replaced by a trustee.

Following Zeydan’s prison sentence, it is expected that a trustee will be appointed in an unconstitutional manner in the Van municipality. Since the March 2024 elections, trustees have been appointed in eight DEM party municipalities. These appointments are in direct violation of the constitutional right to vote and be elected.

İstanbul Mayor Ekrem İmamoğlu, the CHP’s possible presidential candidate against Erdoğan, wrote the following in a statement on X, referring to Erdoğan: “We are paying the bill for using the country for the whims of one person who sees himself above the will of the nation, who thinks he’s the master of the nation. We are paying with the cost of living. We pay with difficulties in making a living. We pay with social decay. We pay with political decay.”

İmamoğlu ended his statement by saying, “The ballot box will come. One person will go, everything will change!” The CHP had recently responded to mounting pressure by calling for early elections.

CHP Group Deputy Chairman Ali Mahir Başarır made similar remarks: “Those who try to design politics with dawn operations cannot cover up the real agenda of this country: poverty and misery!”

CHP leader Özgür Özel, on the pro-opposition Halk TV, described “investigations surrounding many municipalities in order to target Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality (IBB)”. Özel answered the question “Is İmamoğlu the target?”: “I believed this with [the operation against] Beşiktaş [Municipality]; I think they are moving towards this target step by step.” Beşiktaş Mayor Rıza Akpolat was arrested last month on corruption allegations.

DEM Party co-chair Tülay Hatimoğulları condemned the operation against CHP and said, “The operation against municipalities is a political coup. Urban consensus is the formula for living together. How can consensus be a crime? On the one hand you will say ‘peace’, on the other hand you will record urban consensus as a reason for detention. We will never accept this.”

“If urban consensus is a crime, have we been committing a crime together since October 1—Hey government? Hey [presidential] palace? Hey prosecutor of the republic?” Hatimoğulları asked, referring to the negotiations conducted through talks with imprisoned PKK leader Abdullah Öcalan and involving all parties in parliament.

The Ankara Chief Public Prosecutor’s Office on Monday launched an investigation into the CHP’s 38th Ordinary Congress, held on 4-5 November 2023. At the congress, which Erdoğan has repeatedly described as “shady”, Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu, who was the party’s presidential candidate in 2023, lost the leadership and Özgür Özel, who was supported by İmamoğlu, was elected instead.

Former chairman Kılıçdaroğlu and former parliamentary group deputy chairman Akif Hamzaçebi were called to testify as witnesses due to their criticism of the congress in the press, but both refused.

Uğur Koç and Berkant Gültekin, the editorial coordinators of the website of the daily BirGün, and Yaşar Gökdemir, the managing editor, were detained on Sunday. The staff of BirGün, which is followed by 2.1 million people on X, were charged with “targeting people involved in the fight against terrorism” for reporting on the pro-government Sabah newspaper’s visit to the Istanbul Chief Public Prosecutor. Gültekin was released, while Koç and Gökdemir were released under judicial control.

The Chief Public Prosecutor in question has recently been at the forefront of investigations and lawsuits against CHP municipalities. Last month, five journalists were detained for taking part in a programme on these developments on Halk TV, four of whom were released under judicial supervision, while the editor-in-chief, Suat Toktaş, was arrested.

According to the report of the Dicle Fırat Journalists’ Association, while 74 journalists were investigated in 2024, 42 journalists were investigated only last January and 9 journalists, mostly from the Kurdish press, were arrested. Social media accounts of Mezopotamya Agency, JINNEWS News Agency and the Yeni Yaşam Newspaper were closed or censored.

The repression by the Erdoğan government in Turkey is in line with the international orientation of the ruling classes, which, under the conditions of escalating imperialist war and growing social inequality, targets the working class first of all. The most striking example of this is the daily trampling on the constitution of the country by the fascist Donald Trump, who was brought to power by the oligarchy four years after his coup attempt in the USA.

Governments allied to the United States know that they no longer face an administration that will pressure them from Washington with the rhetoric of “human rights” because of their antidemocratic practices.