The ambitious, troubled Istanbul mayor taking on Erdogan

ISTANBUL (AFP) – Istanbul mayor Ekrem Imamoglu vowed to fight for a democratic revolution after initially being stripped of his victory over Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan s ally in a 2019 election that again threatens to prematurely end his political career.

The smooth-talking opposition figure s whopping win in a re-run vote three months later turned him into one of the rising stars threatening to break Erdogan s two-decade domination of Turkish politics.

But an Istanbul criminal court ruled Wednesday that Imamoglu s offhand remark to reporters that the city s election officials were "idiots" was defamatory and sentenced him to nearly three years in jail.

It also barred him from politics for the duration of the sentence.

Imamoglu s has appealed, meaning that he will continue serving as mayor while putting his fate in the hands of judges whose impartially he questions all the time.

The case highlights Imamoglu s struggles since the heady days when he grabbed global attention by showing that Erdogan -- who prides himself on never losing an election -- was not invincible.

The 68-year-old Turkish leader launched his own political career as a fiery mayor of Istanbul in the 1990s.

Imamoglu may have been thinking of doing the same when he got Turkey s fractured opposition parties to rally around his mayoral candidacy three years ago.

"What we are doing now is a fight for democracy," Imamoglu told AFP in an interview conducted between the two rounds of voting.

"It will of course be a revolution once we carry it to its conclusion."

Protest wave

Imamoglu s rise from local Istanbul district leader to mayor came on an anti-Erdogan wave that allowed opposition parties to grab power in Turkey s most important cities -- including the capital Ankara.

Some voters were rebelling against the sweeping purges that followed a failed military putsch in 2016.

Others were disenchanted by an economic crisis that erupted with a breakdown in Turkish-US relations in 2018.

A new breed of leaders from the staunchly secular CHP party such as Imamoglu and Mansur Yavas in Ankara provided a clear alternative to Erdogan s Islamic-rooted AKP.

But Imamoglu and Yavas have taken sharply different courses since their joint victories in 2019.