Istanbul mayor arrested days before becoming presidential candidate
Newshour
BBC
4.4 • 984 Ratings
🗓️ 19 March 2025
⏱️ 47 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Turkish authorities have detained Ekrem Imamoglu, from the secular opposition Republican People's Party (CHP), just days before he was due to be selected as a presidential candidate. Also on the programme, the United Nations says one of its international staff has been killed when an explosive was dropped on or fired at a UN compound in central Gaza; and a conversation with Hans Zimmer about his 40 years composing some of the most memorable film music.
(Photo: Supporters of Istanbul Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu gather outside the Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality building to protest the detention of Imamoglu, in Istanbul, Turkey, March 19, 2025. REUTERS/Tolga Uluturk)
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello and welcome to NewsHour from the BBC World Service coming live from London. |
| 0:08.1 | This is Owen Bennett Jones. |
| 0:10.1 | Recep Tayyip Erdogan first won power as the mayor of Istanbul back in the 1990s. |
| 0:15.8 | And he then founded a party that quickly had mass appeal. |
| 0:20.4 | It was the AKP and it projected Islamism and economic |
| 0:24.5 | success, a winning combination. In 2003, he was Prime Minister, 2014 president, and overall |
| 0:31.4 | that time he did something that many thought impossible. He broke the power of the Turkish |
| 0:35.6 | army. And having lived his life in power, |
| 0:39.8 | he doesn't want to give it up, it seems. The news today is that the mayor of Istanbul, |
| 0:44.8 | Ekram Imammolu, a potential challenger, has been arrested. |
| 1:05.5 | There we are. That's people protesting outside the head coasters of Mr. Amabolo's party, the Republican People's Party, and that's defying the authorities who banned all rallies for four days. |
| 1:13.8 | Well, Emily Wither is a BBC journalist in Istanbul. Were there enough people in the crowds to create concerns for the government? |
| 1:18.1 | Well, I mean, maybe not to worry them so much, |
| 1:21.9 | but definitely worry them enough that they have done their very best to stop people going out onto the streets. |
| 1:24.3 | They've closed lots of roads here throughout the day. |
| 1:27.4 | They've shut down key metro stations. They've closed lots of roads here throughout the day. They've shut down |
| 1:28.1 | key metro stations. They've also turned off some social media sites here in Turkey. But despite |
| 1:35.0 | that, we are seeing thousands on the streets in certain areas here in Istanbul, such as outside |
| 1:40.9 | Imamolu's offices here. And also in Ankara, we've seen quite large protests, |
| 1:46.7 | but the police are breaking them up. Some of these protests have been broken up violently |
| 1:51.5 | today. And we're not quite seeing the huge numbers that could really force a change here. |
| 1:57.2 | That may change in the coming days as we go into the weekend. We have seen another |
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