Turkey detains 36 in bribery probe targeting opposition mayor

Turkish prosecutors ordered the detention of 36 people, including Hüseyin Can Güner, the mayor of Ankara’s Çankaya district and a member of the main opposition Republican People’s Party, in a bribery and tender-rigging investigation. The Ankara chief prosecutor’s office said the operation was carried out by the Ankara Provincial Security Directorate’s Financial Crimes Unit and involved searches and seizures at suspects’ addresses on allegations of forming or joining a criminal organization, accepting bribes, giving bribes and bid rigging. By the time the operation was announced, 27 of the 36 suspects had already been detained while searches continued for the rest.

Güner said on X that he had informed authorities of his whereabouts and left a spare key to his home for officers who were searching it while he was traveling to Ankara. He denied wrongdoing and said he was cooperating. Prosecutors did not say when, or whether, formal charges would follow, and they did not announce any immediate suspension from office.

The case lands in a capital where municipal politics have become one of the clearest fault lines between President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s government and the CHP. The opposition won Turkey’s 31 March 2024 local elections, taking major cities including Ankara and Istanbul, and the result marked the first time since 1977 that the CHP finished first nationwide in a local vote. Çankaya is one of Ankara’s most prominent districts, making any legal move against its mayor especially sensitive in a city that has become a showcase for the opposition’s ability to govern.

The new detentions will also be measured against a wider crackdown that has already swept up hundreds of CHP members and municipal workers, including 14 mayors, in corruption, insulting-officials and terrorism-linked cases. That record has turned each fresh case into more than a single municipal scandal, since critics see a pattern of pressure on opposition-run local governments while supporters of the prosecutions present them as routine anti-corruption enforcement. In Çankaya, as in earlier cases, the immediate question is whether the evidence will sustain the allegations in court or whether the investigation will deepen the political battle over who controls Turkey’s cities.