The ongoing legal campaign against Ekrem Imamoglu, the jailed mayor of Istanbul and presumptive opposition presidential candidate, reached an unprecedented logistical and judicial peak on July 6. In a single day, the most prominent political rival to President Recep Tayyip Erdogan was scheduled to defend himself across three separate criminal proceedings.

The extraordinary scheduling posed a spotlight on the mounting legal pressure, which is seen as an overt attempt to permanently disqualify Imamoglu from public life ahead of the upcoming elections. The mayor has more than a dozen ongoing trials.

Corruption, espionage, forgery

The Republican People’s Party (CHP) figure, who has been held in pre-trial arrest since March 2025, faced an array of charges spanning from administrative malpractice to national security threats. The three distinct cases heard on July 6 included the main Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality (IBB) case along with the political espionage and diploma forgery cases.

The main IBB case is a massive, 414-defendant trial concerning allegations of corruption, graft and embezzlement during Imamoglu’s tenure at the IBB. The hearings are being conducted at the infamous Silivri prison complex, where Imamoglu is also held.

In the espionage case, Imamoglu is being prosecuted alongside journalist Merdan Yanardag, his political adviser Necati Ozkan and businessman Huseyin Gun. The case was based on Gun’s alleged statement during his questioning by prosecutors.

At the first hearing, Gun declined that he was a spy and he had conducted espionage activities with the three other defendants. Nevertheless, the trial continues. Imamoglu has a court ruling for being jailed pending trial from the IBB case while the other three defendants are kept in prison for the espionage case in question.

The diploma forgery case is another trial regarding allegations of "forgery of official documents" following the abrupt annulment of Imamoglu’s undergraduate business degree by Istanbul University in March 2025. A university diploma is a credential legally required to run for the Turkish presidency.

"A lawlessness triathlon"

The logistical bottleneck of managing three trials simultaneously follows a period of escalating friction between the defense and the state judiciary. Just days prior, on July 2, courtroom proceedings descended into chaos when Imamoglu and his legal team fiercely protested a newly imposed judicial deadline aiming to wrap up the first stage of the main trial by July 9.

Defense lawyers argued that compressing the timeline made a robust defense impossible for a case encompassing over 400 co-defendants. The ensuing argument led to the presiding judge ordering gendarmerie officers to forcibly remove Imamoglu, his counsel and observing opposition MPs from the courtroom.

On July 6, Imamoglu attended the espionage hearing at 10:30 and he left after 15 minutes to attend the diploma hearing.

During his statement at the diploma hearing, he described the day as “a lawlessness triathlon”.