Jailed Istanbul mayor defends self over ‘Makarios statue’ accusation

Jailed Istanbul mayor Ekrem Imamoglu on Saturday evening moved to defend himself over accusations that he had erected a statue of the Republic of Cyprus’ founding president Archbishop Makarios III in the city.

He made the defence in a post on social media which referenced statements he had made in court on Monday as he faces a trial over allegations of corruption in public office, which he denies.

Instead, he has argued that the trial, his arrest last year and subsequent 13-month detention, and the revocation of the degree he obtained from the Istanbul University, are part of a political plot aimed at preventing him from challenging incumbent Recep Tayyip Erdogan for Turkey’s presidency at the next election. 

On this front, he has already been selected by his political party the CHP – the party of Turkey’s founding president Mustafa Kemal Ataturk and the country’s current largest opposition party – as its candidate for the next presidential election.

Given his belief that the process is a political plot, he offered accusations over the statue as evidence of the lengths to which Erdogan and his associates will go to discredit him.

“Apparently, I built a statue of Makarios! As someone who lived in Cyprus for two years!” he said on Saturday, before explaining that he had commissioned a statue while mayor of the western Istanbul district of Beylikduzu, having held the post between 2014 and 2019, when he was elected mayor of all of Istanbul.

That statue, he said, was “a monument and a square for the Cyprus peace operation, covering an area of 600 square metres, depicting the glorious Turkish soldiers and freedom fighters together”.

He pointed out that the family of influential late Turkish Cypriot leader Rauf Denktash, a likeness of whom is the statue’s centrepiece, was given the final decision of which of the potential designs would be used, before explaining the statue in detail.

“There is a huge monument there. In one corner, the artist depicts the 1960 London Agreement, with Fazil Kucuk and Makarios’ faces filled with anger. Rauf Denktaş is not there, but he is depicted as a young man, pounding the table,” he said.

He then detailed a conversation he asserts that he had with Erdogan during the 2019 Istanbul mayoral election campaign, when the accusations he had erected a statue of Makarios were first levelled, and at the end of which he beat former Turkish prime minister and close Erdogan ally Binali Yildirim to the post.

“I said, ‘do not say that’. Look, it was exactly like that … I remember it like it was yesterday,” he said, before explaining that his personal secretary had shown Erdogan a photograph of the statue on his mobile phone in an attempt to explain the presence of a likeness of Makarios on it

“I pointed it out with my finger. I said, ‘Mr President, look, this is the matter in the corner over there. What is this peace operation [monument] in Beylikduzu … What is it for? The glorious Turkish soldiers on one side, the freedom fighters on the other, Rauf Denktash in the middle?’” he said.

He said that he had told Erdogan that “maybe there is not even such a monument in Cyprus”, and that he had grown an affinity with the island because he had studied in Cyprus for two years.

“Do you know what he said to me? He said ‘ohoo’. He said, ‘Mr mayor, you will see what is coming’, to me,” he concluded.

It was Imamoglu’s studies in Cyprus which were offered as the grounds for the revocation of his degree, with the university last year concluding that the university in Cyprus at which he had studied, Kyrenia’s Girne American University, was not adequately recognised for him to have been able to transfer to Istanbul. 

He has been in detention since March last year, and was in July last sentenced to 20 months in prison for “insulting and threatening” Akin Gurlek, who was at the time Istanbul’s chief public prosecutor, but was in February appointed as Turkey’s justice minister. 

Two months prior to his arrest, he had accused Gurlek of targeting opposition political figures through “politically motivated” investigations.

His arrest sparked protests across Turkey, with Turkish nationals living in Cyprus also taking to the streets. 

Days after his arrest, the CHP formally nominated him to be its candidate at Turkey’s next presidential election, which must be held before June 2028, and for which it is a requirement for all candidates to hold at least a bachelor’s degree.