Tens of thousands of people attended a rally on Sunday in Ankara the day before the court hearing that might oust the leader of the main opposition party.

More than 500 people, including 17 mayors affiliated with the People’s Democratic Party (CHP), were detained over the year as part of a corruption investigation. The court today will decide whether the 2023 CHP congress was valid.

If the court rules to invalidate the congress, it might affect the opposition’s preparation for the 2028 presidential elections. Earlier this year, police arrested potential CHP presidential candidate and Istanbul mayor Ekrem İmamoğlu. The current CHP leader, Özgür Özel, gave a speech at the rally, accusing the government of undermining democratic values to keep power.

“This case is political,” he said. “The accusations are slander. Our comrades are innocent. What’s being done is a coup — a coup against the future president, against the future government. We will resist, we will resist, we will resist.”

The government denies any political motives behind the case.

In the videos from Ankara, people were chanting “President İmamoğlu” and demanding that the current president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, resigns.

Since March, İmamoğlu, who’s usually referred to as “the main Erdogan rival“, has remained in jail. Before he was the mayor of the biggest European city and was popular in the country, a letter he wrote from prison was read out loud at the rally.

“The era of ‘I’ in this country will end, and the era of ‘we’ will begin,” İmamoğlu wrote. “One person will lose, and everyone else will win.”

Erdoğan has been serving as the president since 2014, and before that for 12 years, he was prime minister. As well as İmamoğlu, he became popular after serving as the mayor of Istanbul.

Photo by Mocmuk found HERE and used under a Creative Commons licence. The image has not been modified.