This is John Batchel, a conversation with Sinan Chidi of the Foundation for the Defense of Democracy

about Erdogan in power for 22 years in Turkey and showing his might in Syria and the whole region.

But the arrest of the major opposition party candidate for presidency in 26, Imamulu, now jailed, has aroused

the opposition in a way that the foreign adventures cannot.

Sinan Chidi describes how this is going for Erdogan not well, jailing the mayor, the popular mayor of Istanbul, because,

well, there was nothing to the charges whatsoever.

Sanan Chidi, much more of this tonight.

Yeah, it doesn't look good for now.

In the last few days, his lawyer's request to essentially move him to, you know, to free him from

pretrial detention was rejected by the courts. We also know that Imam al-a basically, you know,

stood before the court for the first time to defend a variety of spurious allegations against

him. And he was, and he seemed pretty seemed pretty not he's seen but he was very

defiant in front of the prosecutors as was the panel of judges that over that that saw his uh that

saw his is his cases um and this really is not very comforting for erdogan because the the charges

that are being leveled and maintained and sort of

read out towards against Imammolu is not something that Erdogan likes. And the reason for that is,

is what we are hearing is essentially the prosecutors who charged Imam al-U a couple of weeks ago

assured Erdogan that they had the charged the Imam al-a a couple of weeks ago, assured Erdogan that

they had the goods on Imamala, right? That corruption and this and that, that, that they,

that it was going to be a sort of bunker buster, right, in terms of a, you know, revelatory

allegations against the mayor of Istanbul. And those really haven't come

through. And we've heard through the sort of grapevine in terms of reporting from Turkey

...