Ekrem İmamoğlu

Ekrem İmamoğlu (born June 4, 1970, Akçaabat, Turkey) is a Turkish politician considered one of the best positioned candidates to challenge the rule of Pres. Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. From 2019 until his arrest in 2025, İmamoğlu served as mayor of Istanbul, the economic engine of Turkey (Türkiye). He is a senior member of the Republican People’s Party (Cumhuriyet Halk Partisi; CHP), the strongest political party in Turkey after Erdoğan’s Justice and Development Party (Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi; AKP).

Early life and education

İmamoğlu was born near Trabzon in northeastern Turkey, in the same Black Sea region that was home to Erdoğan’s parents. His upbringing was religious, and his father, Hasan İmamoğlu, was active in the Motherland Party (MP), which ruled Turkey from 1983 to 1991 and advocated many of the same policies as Erdoğan’s early AKP. His mother, Hava İmamoğlu, supported the CHP. In 1988 Ekrem İmamoğlu enrolled at Girne American University (GAU) in Turkish-controlled northern Cyprus before transferring in 1990 to Istanbul University. He graduated in 1994 with a bachelor’s degree in business administration and subsequently pursued a master’s degree in human resource management at the same university. In March 2025, just before İmamoğlu’s arrest, Istanbul University annulled his bachelor’s degree, saying his transfer there was not valid because GAU’s accreditation, which was pending when he transferred, was refused in 1991. A bachelor’s degree is required to run for president in Turkey, and the CHP was just days away from formally making İmamoğlu its presidential candidate.

Political career in Istanbul and arrest in 2025

İmamoğlu was largely unknown in Turkey until he ran for mayor of Istanbul. After university he had a career in business management and entered local politics in 2009. In 2014 he became mayor of the suburban Beylikdüzü district on the European side of Istanbul and gained a reputation among its affluent residents for his administrative skills. The CHP, which for decades had been struggling to shed an elitist image, chose İmamoğlu to run for mayor of Istanbul in 2019. He was an outsider and a fresh face and considered a moderate who could appeal to more-conservative voters.

By running a low-profile campaign free of controversy, at a time when mismanagement by the incumbent AKP was causing the lira to plummet, İmamoğlu won initially by a razor-thin margin, as did CHP candidates across five of Turkey’s six largest cities. The electoral commission, however, annulled the result in Istanbul, citing irregularities, and called for a new election. The annulment backfired: the controversy brought more attention to İmamoğlu, and the rerun election resulted in a much larger margin of victory—from less than 1 percentage point to nearly 10 percentage points. Later that year, during a public dispute with Turkey’s interior minister, İmamoğlu referred to “the people who canceled the March 31 election” as “idiots.”

In May 2021 prosecutors indicted İmamoğlu on charges of insulting election authorities, based on his “idiots” comment from 2019. He was sentenced in December 2022 to two years and seven months in prison and banned from public office. İmamoğlu appealed the ruling and remained in politics, winning reelection as mayor in March 2024 while the case was pending. Meanwhile, new charges were brought against him, including in June 2023 for alleged tender rigging while mayor of the Beylikdüzü district and in January 2025 for allegedly attempting to influence the judiciary through public criticism of pending cases. Worried about the growing legal challenges facing İmamoğlu and other members of the CHP, the party moved in January 2025 to begin the process to select a candidate for the next presidential election—scheduled for 2028 but widely expected to take place earlier to allow Erdoğan to sidestep constitutional term limits. Soon afterward, in February, another indictment was filed against İmamoğlu, accusing him of criticizing a public prosecutor in Istanbul.

On March 19, 2025, just days before the CHP was to choose İmamoğlu as its candidate, he was arrested on charges of graft and aiding the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (Partiya Karkeren Kurdistan; PKK), a militant group designated as a terrorist organization under Turkish law. He was selected as the CHP’s presidential candidate on March 23 but the same day was jailed and formally disqualified from public office by a judicial ruling. The charge of aiding the PKK was dropped. His arrest and jailing led to a level of unrest not seen in Turkey since 2013, when a crackdown on massive protests first highlighted the growing entrenchment of the AKP and the erosion of democratic expression and freedom.