The leader of Turkey’s largest opposition party has hit out at Keir Starmer, accusing the British prime minister of ignoring the arrest of the mayor of Istanbul and democratic backsliding in Turkey.
Speaking to the Guardian, the leader of the left-leaning Republican People’s party (CHP), Özgür Özel, said he was disappointed that Starmer had failed to speak up about attacks on a “sister party”.
Emphasising that his frustrations were with the Labour leadership and Starmer personally for failing to offer a full condemnation after leading CHP politician and Istanbul mayor Ekrem İmamoğlu was detained last month, Özel said “they are making a historic mistake by seeing this as a domestic Turkish issue”.
“Starmer’s attitude is one that he will not be able to explain in future,” he added.
“I would like to send the following message: ‘After this is all over, we will remember the silence of our friends, not the loud voices and negative comments of our enemies’.”
İmamoğlu was arrested and imprisoned last month on an array of corruption charges, triggering the largest anti-government demonstrations in Turkey in over a decade as hundreds of thousands took to the streets.
The CHP have called for twice-weekly rallies across Turkey and an economic boycott of companies they say are close to president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, hoping to spur an anti-government movement that has so far seen almost 1500 people detained, including journalists and municipal politicians.
While Turkish authorities insist the charges against the Istanbul mayor are not politicised, Özel labelled it “a political trial,” adding that Erdoğan “has his lawyers imprison those who disturb him and his team politically”.
The Istanbul mayor, who had ruled a city of 16 million for six years, was widely seen as Erdoğan’s main rival. He was named the CHP’s candidate for president on the same day he was sent to a maximum security facility on the outskirts of Istanbul.
Elections in Turkey are due in 2028, although an early vote is widely predicted, and the CHP has called for snap elections after officially nominating İmamoğlu as its candidate.
Despite the mayor’s abrupt detention, the CHP leader said the party has already mapped out plans for how İmamoğlu can campaign for the presidency even if he remains behind bars. Özel labelled the upcoming election a referendum on whether “there will be autocracy or democracy in Turkey”.
Özel sat for an interview shortly before hosting a rally in Istanbul, with another rally in Erdoğan’s Black Sea heartland scheduled for this weekend. The Turkish president filed a criminal complaint against the opposition leader earlier this week, accusing him of insulting the president by saying that Turkey is “governed by a junta that is afraid of elections”.
The opposition leader dismissed the lawsuit as an attempt to cow him but said he had not ruled out that Erdoğan could still seek his arrest, “if he can’t cope politically like what happened with İmamoğlu”.
While European leaders, including French president Emmanuel Macron and European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen, have spoken out about the mayor’s arrest, the Turkish opposition leader said he also wanted to see Europe do more to pressure Ankara away from democratic backsliding.
İmamoğlu’s arrest came as European leaders have reportedly considered tapping Turkey, which boasts the second-largest army in Nato after the US, to provide peacekeeping forces in Ukraine.
“It is not right to make unprincipled negotiations with Erdoğan out of security concerns. Having Nato’s first largest army in the hands of Trump and Nato’s second largest army in the hands of an autocrat does not help anyone,” said Özel.
In the weeks since the mayor’s detention, there has been little comment from the British government or the Labour party regarding events in Turkey or the deportation of BBC reporter Mark Lowen, who covered the anti-government protests. Turkish authorities say they deported Lowen for working without accreditation.
Stephen Doughty, minister for Europe, North America and overseas territories, told parliament in late March that Britain was “closely monitoring the situation”.
“The UK expects Turkey to uphold its international commitments and the rule of law, including swift and transparent judicial processes,” he added.
Özel accused Starmer of prioritising issues of regional security such as events in Syria over the removal of democratic rights and the “great injustices” taking place in Turkey.
“The loser of this process, not just in my eyes but in the eyes of democratic forces worldwide, is Erdoğan in Turkey and Starmer at the international level,” he said.
